A Boon for Bill
by canoncansodoff
Summary: Extreme measures are taken to distract Molly long enough for Bill to both neutralize a love potion and ask Harry to help make his engagement to Fleur possible.  A kinder, smuttier alternative to Book Six's "An Excess of Phlegm" chapter. H/Hr, Bill/Fleur.
1. Chapter 1  An Alluring Difference

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

**Chapter 1: An Alluring Difference**

**oo00OO00oo**

There was a light on in the kitchen window as Harry Potter and his Headmaster approached the back door of the Burrow after their successful recruiting trip.

"Somebody is still up at this hour?" the teen wondered.

"Arthur has been working long hours at his new post," Dumbledore noted. "Almost everyone at the Ministry has, now that Voldemort's return has been confirmed."

"New post?"

"Ah…perhaps that is his story to tell," the Headmaster replied sagely, as he stepped up to the thick wooden door and knocked. In order to gain entry, Dumbledore was required to answer a challenge through the door crack. Harry's price of admission into the Burrow's kitchen was a bone-crushing hug against Molly Weasley's bosom.

Once released, Harry spotted two younger witches sitting at the kitchen table with mugs in their hands. The one with her back to him had mousy brown hair. The other, who was facing Harry, was so breathtakingly beautiful that he couldn't help but stare.

Now, a charitable person might attribute the teenager's bad manners to the witch's tall, willowy frame, or to her long blonde hair that appeared to emanate a faint, silvery glow. A less charitable person might instead place the blame on the thin, nearly translucent dressing gown, or to the amount of cleavage revealed by that gown's loosely knotted sash.

Molly Weasley fell firmly into the latter camp, and proved it by growling out a spell that transfigured the witch's gown into a thick terrycloth robe that closed tightly at the neck.

"Hey!"

"Yes, well…"

"I'll not have you dressing like a scarlet woman in front of my boys," Molly spat.

"But…I was covered, and you said that 'Arry would not be making his arrival until ze morning?"

Dumbledore took a step forward and held his hands out as if to separate the two witches.

"I must accept the blame for this," he stated. "We were lucky that Slughorn proved far more agreeable and the effort far less time-consuming than I had anticipated…Harry's doing of course. Ah, hello, Nymphadora!"

"Hello, Headmaster," the third witch replied, turning towards the arrivals. "Wotcher, Harry."

The-Boy-Who-Lived could hardly believe that this was the same witch he'd first met during his previous escape from Privet Drive…not just because she wasn't sporting her usual mop of bubble-gum-pink hair, but because she hadn't immediately challenged the use of her first name, or teased him for his age-appropriate indiscreet manners.

"Hiya, Tonks…how are you?"

"Just peachy, thanks," she replied, pushing back from the table. Tonks then pulled her cloak around her shoulders and nodded. "Well, I'd better be off…thanks for the tea and sympathy, Molly and…Harry, you remember Fleur Delacour, don't you?"

"Erm…yeah, of course."

"Eet 'as been too long, 'Arry," the part-Veela declared warmly, as she too rose from the table. It took only a few light steps for her to cross the room, place her hands on Harry's shoulders, and lean forward to kiss each of his cheeks.

"Ah…yes. Eez good," he stammered, feeling the places where her lips had touched burn.

Molly muttered in the background.

Fleur tilted her head towards the older witch's words, then smiled and greeted Albus Dumbledore in mostly the same manner (her lips finding far more air than cheek). The Headmaster accepted the attention with good-humor, and begged forgiveness that he would not be able to stay.

"Tonks, dear, are you sure that you have to go?" asked Molly. "Bill should be arriving home with my husband before too much longer."

The metamorph's eyes met Fleur's, and they shared a small smile before she insisted on saying her goodbyes, and headed out the back door towards the designated outbound apparition point. Dumbledore was close behind, leaving Harry alone with Molly and Fleur.

"Are you hungry, Dear?" the Weasley matriarch asked him. "Have a seat at the table…I've got some onion soup on the simmer."

Harry's eyes darted towards the stove and smiled.

"That sounds wonderful, Mrs. Weasley…thanks."

With his attention focused on the delicious aroma, Harry missed Fleur's frown behind his back.

"Come sit next to me, 'Arry…I 'ave been longing to see you," she said.

The Boy-Who-Lived turned, surprised by the request, and by the way that the part-Veela was almost caressing the section of wooden bench closest to her.

"Really?" he asked, sitting a respectful distance from the witch. She gave him a mock pout, then grabbed his arm and slid her bum over until they were thigh-to-thigh.

"Oh, yes…I 'ad no opportunity to zank you for saving me zat night in ze maze."

"Oh, well…you would have done the same…" Harry replied nervously, his brain focused on the leg contact.

Fleur shook her head and squeezed his arm. "Or to zay my thanks again for saving my seester. You remember Gabrielle, no? She never stops talking about her 'Arry Potter. She can't wait to see you as well."

"Is she here too, then?"

"No, no…you are so silly!" Fleur smiled, as she squeezed his arm. "I mean next summer when Bill and I wish to…ah, but you do not know, no?"

"I don't know know what?"

The melodic laugh that escaped from the blonde-haired witch was carried on a mint-scented exhale that brushed against Harry's face like a warm wind.

"Bill and I are intended to be married!" Fleur declared.

"Oh, erm…congratulations," said Harry blankly.

"Zank you,'Arry," the part-Veela replied, pulling him into another embrace.

When Harry looked over Fleur's shoulder he noticed that Molly had a stern look on her face, as she stared down at the pot of onion soup and stirred with far more force and speed than was necessary.

"Bill eez very busy these days," noted Fleur, "working very 'ard at ze bank, and sometimes 'elping with 'is father's work as well. I only work part-time at Gringott's for my Eenglish, and Bill and I have been staying here…to help with the watching, but also to save money for ze down payment on a house once we are wed."

Molly let out an audible sniff. Fleur, having already heard something similar on many other occasions, paid her no mind.

"I was so pleased to 'ear zat you would be staying 'ere as well…zere isn't much to do 'ere unless you like cooking or throwing ze garden gnomes! And I know zat 'Ermione 'as been so anxious to 'ave your arrival…"

Harry's eyes lit up at the news. "Hermione? Is she here?"

Molly let another inarticulate sound escape her mouth. "She arrived a few days ago," she then stated.

Confirmation of this news came to Harry when he felt something else brush against his leg…something warm and furry. He ducked his head underneath the table and smiled.

"Crookshanks! How are you doing, old boy?"

The part-kneazle looked up at Harry, then glanced at his thigh-against-thigh point of contact with Fleur. When he reached down and offered Crookshanks a spot on his lap, the familiar shook his head, then darted out from the other side of the table.

"Where is he off to?" Harry wondered, as the part-Kneazle scampered towards the opened doorway that led upstairs.

"'Ermione's familiar has been playing ze lookout for her," Fleur answered.

"Ah, I see," said Harry. He stood up and braced himself for the hug that would follow a shout of surprise, then the pounding on stairs as his best friend barreled her way down to see him. It wasn't until later that he realized that Hermione's silent arrival was intentional, so as not to wake up certain others.

The bushy-haired witch smiled when she poked her head into the kitchen, then practically leaped into her best friend's arms.

"Harry, I would have…" she mumbled into his shoulder. "But they said that you wouldn't…."

"Ssssh…s'okay, Hermione," the Boy-Who-Lived whispered into her ear. "I really wasn't supposed to arrive until tomorrow."

Fleur stood and slipped onto the bench on the opposite side of the table. Harry acknowledged this with a mouthed "Thanks" as he guided Hermione down onto the spot that had just been vacated. The Muggleborn then pulled her head back from Harry, and carefully scrutinized his face. He knew what she was thinking, and really didn't want to talk about how he'd been coping over the loss of his godfather. So he took the initiative.

"Mrs. Weasley is making soup for me," Harry told Hermione. "So how about I tell you all about our new Potions Professor in between sips?"

"It's late, Harry," Molly noted, as she levitated a bowl of hot onion soup onto the table. "Wouldn't you rather wait until morning, so that you won't have to repeat the story for Ginny and Ron's benefit?"

"Oh, I don't mind," Harry said with a smile. His eyes sought out Hermione's, and then Fleur's, but they were both too focused on the soup bowl to return his attention. He frowned a bit in confusion, and then added, "Unless Fleur would rather fill me in on the details about her engagement to Bill?"

Molly pursed her lips. "They aren't actually engaged yet, you know."

"Only because my Bill wishes to do ze 'onorable thing and ask for ze permission first," Fleur countered.

"Whatever…now off to bed, you two!" she ordered, waving both Hermione and Fleur away from the table with her fingers. "Harry will be following right behind after he eats his soup."

Not wishing to get involved in this disagreement, Harry instead focused on filling his stomach. He looked down at the table and frowned, certain that there had been a spoon there next to the bowl. As he ducked his head to look to see if it had fallen to the floor, Fleur reached across the table and lightly grasped Hermione's hand.

"Molly, while I am 'appy zat you will be my future mozzer-in-law… I am an adult, and 'Ermione only a few months from ze same…"

"Yes, but this is my house and…"

"And we are not your daughters," Fleur gently countered. "And I am not yet your daughter-in-law, and 'Ermione is not even zat."

"You can say _zat_ again!" Hermione muttered, just loud enough for Harry to hear as he rose from the bench.

"What can I get you, Harry?" Molly asked.

"Oh, no worries…I was just going to get a spoon from the drawer…"

"There was one on the table…oh, never mind. Sit down…I'll get you another one."

The Weasley Matriarch was just about to pull out the silverware drawer when she saw movement in the corner of her eye.

"Oh! They're coming!" she exclaimed, pointing towards the clock that was propped up on the kitchen counter-top. Both Bill and Arthur's hands had swung from "Mortal Peril" to "Traveling."

And sure enough, a few moments later there was a knock on the back door. Forgetting all about missing cutlery, Mrs. Weasley hurried to it, pressed her face against the wood, and called out her husband's name. Fleur stood and made her way towards the door as well, anticipating the arrival of her intended. Molly and Arthur then started down a humorous exchange of challenge questions and answers that involved flight mechanics and embarrassing nicknames. Mr. Weasley and Bill were let into the house and, once they broke away from their respective welcome hugs, dropped down onto the bench opposite Harry and Hermione.

"Harry! We weren't expecting you until morning!" Arthur said, reaching a hand across the table as his wife set two more bowls of soup onto the table.

"Thanks, Molly," he said warmly. "Been a rough night…good thing our son the curse-breaker was right there by my side."

"Ah, it was nothing," Bill said with a wave. He kept that hand extended out as Harry gave it a firm shake.

"I hear that congratulations are in order, Bill."

"Thanks, Harry," the curse-breaker replied with a grin. When Fleur leaned over his shoulder and draped her arms around his neck he patted her arm and added, "I still can't believe that she said yes."

"These three were just heading up to bed," Molly blustered, trying to get her way though some passive aggressiveness. "Harry, Dear, you'll have Fred and George's room all to yourself..."

"Why? Where are they?"

"They've been sleeping in the flat over their joke shop," said Molly. "Go on then, Harry. Their room is just off the first floor landing now."

"First floor?" Harry confusedly asked.

Arthur asked, "Haven't been given the grand tour of the new upstairs?"

"He's only just arrived," Molly said defensively. She turned to Harry and added, "We've done a little bit of remodeling since your last stay here, Dear."

"A _little_ bit of remodelling?" Bill snorted. "Found my old bedroom then?"

"William!" Molly chided. "Harry can get a tour in the morning." Addressing the black-haired teen, she added, " Go on, then...just one flight of stairs and to your left...your trunk and owl are already set up."

"Er…thanks," Harry replied, looking across the table towards the family curse-breaker.

"Did your bedroom really get lost?"

Bill smiled. "Dunno. I was out of the country when it supposedly got up and walked away."

Harry imagined a bedroom with legs as it ran down the road. Given all that he'd seen magic do, he wondered if the comment was to be taken literally.

"Why aren't you sleeping in Fred and George's old room, then?" he then asked. "I really don't need a room to myself…I'd be happy to share with Ron again."

Bill snorted. "Sorry, old man…but I'm already bunking with my little brother."

"Really?" asked Harry. "What about Percy's old room…is he back, then?"

Molly choked back some tears and turned away from the table.

"I'm afraid Percy is still…on his own," said Arthur. "Hermione is using his room at the moment."

"But…so Fleur…?"

"I am sharing with my future zister-in-law," the French witch answered. "And getting to know 'er very, very well."

"Ah, I see," Harry said. He stood, but instead of moving towards the stairs, he walked towards the silverware drawer. Molly blocked his way.

"Oh, so sorry…with all of the excitement. You sit down, and I'll warm that soup up for you, and get you a new spoon."

Bill spotted Hermione and Fleur's attention to Harry's bowl and arched an eyebrow. "I'll take care of the soup, Mum," he stated, drawing his wand.

The warming spell was slightly overpowered, causing the broth to boil and spill over the edge of the table where Harry's lap would have been had he still been seated.

"Bill!"

"Oops, sorry about that…end of a long day and all that," the curse-breaker said apologetically.

Molly shook her head and vanished the boiling contents of Harry's soup bowl from both bowl and bench.

"I've got plenty more, Harry dear," she noted, patting his shoulder.

As the teenage wizard sat back down next to Hermione, he spotted her staring at Fleur and Bill, holding a wordless conversation with head nods and eye movement.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"No…not at all, Harry," Hermione replied.

"Are you sure, 'Ermione?" Fleur asked.

The Muggleborn witch glanced nervously at Harry and bit her lower lip. She made a decision, then nodded her head slightly to Fleur and whispered, "We have to be sure."

"Sure about…?" asked Harry.

Hermione cut off his question by reaching down and squeezing high up on his thigh.

"Brace yourself, Harry," she whispered.

"What?" he asked. While turned towards his best friend, Harry didn't notice as Fleur closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders. Instead, he noticed Hermione's eyes dilate, and heard a low-pitched moan escape from her lips as she clamped her knees together and squeezed down harder on his leg.

"Hermione?"

"Y-y-yes, Harry?" the Muggleborn stammered, before biting down on her lower lip in an attempt to limit any other sounds from following.

"Are you okay?" he asked. Hermione was now taking shallow breaths, with her eyes shut and a grip on Harry's thigh that was moving northward.

"I'm fine," the Muggleborn purred.

Harry was far more nervous than fine as his best friend's nipples visibly hardened underneath her gown, and her fingers ran up the inside of his thigh. He reached down and covered Hermione's hand just before it could cup his bits.

"What's going on?" he hissed, shifting his attention from Hermione towards Bill. The red-haired wizard placed his hand out with palm facing Harry, and mouthed the words _"Hold on!"_

The-Boy-Who-Lived cocked his head, and was about to ask Bill for an explanation when a loud moan caused him to completely lose his train of thought. He turned, and caught his breath when he realized that it was Mrs. Weasley that had moaned, rather than the witch that was now squirming by his side.

"Arthur…time for bed!" she ordered, placing her hands on the table and thrusting her ample bosom towards her husband's face.

The Weasley patriarch gasped, more than a bit embarrassed by the obvious signs of his wife's sexual arousal. But not so embarrassed as to look a gift shag in the mouth.

"Erm…right then," he stammered, as he rose from the table. "You four don't stay up too late, right? Goodnight!"

Harry watched with his mouth agape as Arthur scrambled up the stairs, keeping one step ahead of his wife and her groping hands.

Just as soon as Mr. Weasley was out of sight Hermione bolted away from the kitchen table and dashed through the entrance to the adjacent front sitting room…one hand groping her own breast as the other furtively untied the sash of her robe.

"What the hell?" Harry demanded.

"Sorry, it was the only way," said Bill.

"But Hermione…what's wrong with her?"

Bill reached over and grabbed Harry's arm when the black-haired teen rose to check on his best friend.

"Sit, Harry!" he ordered. "Hermione doesn't need your help right now."

"But…"

"Pleaze, 'Arry…listen to Bill," Fleur added, as she stood and canceled Molly's transfiguration spell. The shift from thick terrycloth back to thin silk caused her restored dressing gown to fall completely open in the front, revealing a black lace demi-cup bra and high-cut knickers underneath.

The attention Harry paid to the part-Veela's state of undress was short-lived…the perky pink nipples half-exposed by her half-cups were breathtaking, but not quite a match for the incredibly sexy moans coming from his best friend's mouth in the other room.

"Ohhh….fuck….!" Hermione hissed loudly.

Fleur followed Harry's eyes and blocked the threshold in between the kitchen the sitting room. As she casually retied her dressing gown she said, "Relax, 'Arry…'Ermione has ze situation well in 'and."

Harry doubted this assertion when he heard another loud moan coming from the other room.

"What are you two on about? What have you done to her?"

"Fleur released a variation of her allure that affects women, rather than men," Bill replied. "Defense mechanism when a Veela doesn't want to be the centre of men's attentions."

"Eet waz ze only way to get you away from Molly and 'er soup," added Fleur. The part-Veela then looked back towards the sitting room, pulled her wand, and thought to cast a silencing spell.

"What about Hermione?"

"She'll be fine, once she…releases the effects of the allure," Bill replied. "She's gone through this before, Harry…and she did agree on the need."

"Once she releases the effects? You mean that she's in the other room right now, rubbing one…?"

"Yes she is…and if she isn't too embarrassed over the fact she can explain why later," said Bill. He then pulled a small vial from his pocket and set it down on the table. "Right now, I need you to focus…and drink this potion."

"What for?"

"It's an antidote for Amortentia," Bill asserted. "That's a type of love potion."

"What would I need that for?"

"Because we're certain that Mum brewed up a batch last week, and we can't be sure that she didn't already slip some into your soup."

Harry scowled. "You think your Mum wants me to fall in love…with her?"

"No!" Bill nearly shouted. "With Ginny, you berk. Now will you just drink it?"

"This is ridiculous," Harry muttered, shaking his head. "You expect me to believe that Fleur did something that caused your Mum and Hermione to…get so that they have to…oh, Merlin, so that means that right now your Mum and Dad are…?"

"Yes, Harry, they are," Bill said with a sigh. "They probably didn't think to silence the room again, either." Harry then heard confirmation of this statement when the sound of rhythmic banging drifted down two flights of stairs.

"Oh, that's just…" Harry moaned. He shook his head and added, "Well, so long as they are busy upstairs, maybe you two could back up and start this story from the beginning?"

Bill sighed, and nodded his head. "Fleur and I have been here for a week and a half. We're staying here for the summer because…well because of you."

"Me?"

"Yeah, but…well off-point for now. The point is that when we arrived here and announced that we intended to get engaged, Mum went through the roof. She's convinced that Fleur is using her allure to trap me, and would rather I settle down with the nice English witch that she's picked out for me."

"What? Who?"

"Ze metamorph…Tonks," Fleur claimed. "Although she eez not part of Molly's schemes, as 'er 'eart belongs to another."

"Either way, within a couple of days of our arrival, Mum had her cauldrons on the boil," Bill said. "She claimed that she was just making medicinal potions, but…well easy enough to tell from the owl-mailed ingredients."

"But if she wanted to use the love potion on you…then why would I need to worry?"

"We might be completely off-base here," Bill admitted. "But you could be a target of opportunity…so long as she's got the potion brewed, and is still dreaming of her one big happy Weasley family…"

"Her what?"

"Molly weeshes Bill to wed Tonks, and to match 'Ermione with Ronald, and to pair up you wiz Ginny," Fleur declared.

"Why would she…that's just so hard to believe," Harry decided.

"I know, I don't want to believe it myself," Bill admitted. "But with Mum almost bragging about the fact that potions were used to get Dad in the right mind…"

"Really?"

"Yeah," said Bill. "Dad laughs about it now, saying 'all's well that ends well'…claims that the potion can't create what isn't there just under the surface to begin with, but…"

Harry shook his head as he eyed the vial.

"Not to doubt what you're telling me," he said, "but if this is all true, why are you helping me?"

"Because it's the right thing to do?" asked Bill.

"True, but…to go against your own family…"

"I think that I'm actually helping the family by helping you, Harry."

"And 'elping 'im start 'is own family," Fleur added with a grin. She turned towards the sitting room after catching movement in the corner of her eye. "Ah, I knew it would be quick with you 'ere, 'Arry…eef you will excuse me?"

The teenage wizard shook his head again as Fleur walked into the sitting room. Then he thought of what may have just happened in the sitting room, and couldn't help but lean forward and twist his head for a look.

"Eyes here, Harry" Bill hissed, covering Harry's arm again. "She's going to be embarrassed enough as it is, don't you think?"

The black-haired wizard thought for a moment, then sighed and leaned as far back as he could without falling off the bench.

"So what did Fleur mean about you helping yourself?" he asked.

Bill started to glance back towards his girlfriend, but caught himself in time.

"Best that she be here to explain," he decided. He then looked down at the vial and asked, "Would it help if I took a vow stating that the vial contains a love potion neutralizer, and that everything else that I've told you tonight is true, to the best of my knowledge?"

Harry stared down at the vial and shook his head.

"That won't be necessary," he decided. "I suppose that you've already dosed yourself?"

"Yeah," Bill replied. "Hermione did as well, once she arrived and we warned her off."

"Really?"

"Yes, Harry…really," Hermione declared from the entrance to the kitchen.

The Boy-Who-Lived looked up towards his best friend. Her hair was in place and her dressing gown tied modestly across her chest. Any sign that she had been sexually aroused…and acted in response…were gone, so long as you considered her flushed cheeks to be due more to embarrassment than excitement.

"Hey…are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she muttered, as she cast her eyes downward and walked around the table to take her seat next to Harry.

"Well…erm…thanks," Harry stammered. "For willing to…you know…"

"No worries," Hermione said quietly. "Just make it worthwhile and drink that bloody neutralizing potion before Molly finishes up and comes looking for us."

Given the situation, Harry did not care to hear the words "Molly" and "comes" in the same sentence. But he took this advice to heart and brought the vial that Bill had placed on the table to his lips.

Hermione didn't care for the way that those lips were smiling as he downed the neutralizer.

"Something funny, Mister?" she challenged. "I would have thought that you'd react more maturely about this…not like you're Ron…"

Harry's eyes widened at this chastisement. He waited until he'd finished off the vial's contents before responding, however.

"Sorry, Hermione…I was laughing over the fact that you just swore, not that you just…"

"Well, never mind then," she replied, finding it hard to look Harry in the eye.

He decided that it would be best for his eyes (and thoughts) to focus elsewhere as well, so he turned to Bill and Fleur and asked, "So what about you two starting a family, then?"

It was Bill's turn to experience reddened cheeks. He turned to his girlfriend, who nodded and placed her hand over his in support.

"Bill and I…we wish to be married, but we can not do zis without your 'elp, 'Arry."

"My help?" asked Harry.

"Oui," the part-Veela replied. "Because of last year…when you saved both ze life of my seester and myself…"

"What?" asked Harry. "What does…not that I think that I actually saved your lives…although I was happy to help…you would have done the same…no need to…."

"But zere eez a need," Fleur declared. "I can feel it in my 'eart every time zat I zink about fully giving my 'eart to William."

"You…you feel something about me in your heart?" Harry asked incredulously. "Not that I'm not flattered, Fleur, but…"

Hermione decided that she could no longer hold her tongue and entered the conversation.

"Harry, it's not that Fleur has feelings for you…she just feels that she can't act on her feelings towards Bill with the life debt or debts that she thinks are hanging over her head."

"Not zink, 'Ermione…I know," Fleur insisted.

The raven-haired teenager furrowed his eyebrows. "Even if there was a life debt here, which I kind of doubt…why would that get in the way of anything? I could just forgive the debt, or have it paid off with a promise not to betray me, or something?"

"Eet doesn't work zat way with ze Veela," Fleur replied. "We are ze creatures sexual…if ze life debt eez created eet must be repaid with body and soul…"

"Body and…you mean that you have to give me your body...but I thought that this was about you two?"

"Eet eez, 'Arry."

"You aren't suggesting that you need to give me your virginity, or something like that, to satisfy this debt you think exists?"

The serious expression on Fleur's face lightened considerably with this question.

"Eet would be too late for zat, zanks to my William, 'ere," she replied coyly.

Harry's attention turned towards Bill, who had his eyes firmly focused on the table in front of him. He tried his best to ignore the thoughts associated with Fleur's last comment, and asked, "So in plain terms, Bill…how can I help you two? Do I need to ask Fleur for a kiss, or something?"

The older wizard shook his head. "When she said heart and soul, Harry…we're talking more than just a kiss."

"So how…?"

Bill let out a deep sigh as he looked straight into Harry's eyes.

"By granting me a boon, milord!" he stated firmly.

There was silence in the room as the four dwelt on that statement. Not that noise couldn't still be heard, mind you, given what was carrying down the stairs…

"Plain terms, Bill?" Harry finally asked.

"Fleur is certain that her debt to you has to be repaid sexually," the older wizard explained. "But that doesn't mean that there has to be a direct repayment…you could give Fleur to one of your liege-men as a boon."

"Give Fleur to somebody else?" asked Harry. "Like she was my property or something?"

Hermione shook her head and squeezed Harry's hand.

"No, Harry, it's not like that…okay, well maybe it is, but…"

"Not helping, Hermione…"

"You wouldn't be giving Fleur to just anybody…you can give her to Bill as a boon from his liege lord, and then they can become engaged for real," his best friend countered.

"I can?" Harry asked. "And if I did, they could?"

"Oui, milord," Fleur said with a smile.

"And what is all this milord business?" asked Harry. "I'm not a Lord." He then turned towards Hermione and weakly added, "Right?"

His bushy-haired friend smiled and shook her head. "Not that I can tell, Harry…at least not yet."

"You mean that I…"

"As Heir Apparent you can become Lord Potter on your birthday…maybe Lord Black as well, depending on what Sirius set out in his will."

"But I'll only be sixteen? And while Dumbledore said that Sirius left me everything, he didn't say anything about me becoming Lord Potter or Lord Black?"

"I'm not surprised," Bill said. "More than once I've heard him and Mum talking about you needing to enjoy your childhood for as long as possible. But the fact is, as the Potter Heir Apparent you have the right to claim your lordship at sixteen and be recognized an adult a year early."

"Yeah, well that first bit I can believe," Harry said cynically. "So let me see if I've got this right. When I turn sixteen next month, I can become Lord Potter, and then you can swear fealty to me, and then you can ask for a boon, and I can transfer Fleur's life debt from me to you so that you two can get married like you should be able to in the first place?"

Bill thought for a moment, then nodded. "That's it, more or less."

"And that would make me square with the Delacour family?"

Fleur giggled. "Wiz me at least. My seester will insist zat she still must be sitting on your hook."

Harry closed his eyes and groaned, while Hermione squeezed his hand and said that there would be plenty of time down the road to worry about Gabrielle sitting on Harry's hook.

"So what would it mean if you become my liege-man, Bill?" Harry asked, his eyes still shut.

"It would mean that I would become your man…you would have my loyalty above all others."

Fleur cleared her throat. Harry opened his eyes while Bill turned towards his girlfriend and blushed.

"Erm, except for my wife, if you don't mind, milord."

This qualifier earned Bill a kiss on the cheek. He then turned back to Harry and said, "Not counting my wife, Harry…but counting my Mum…or Dumbledore…or even Gringott's if it ever came down to it."

Harry mulled this over for a moment. Or at least tried to…it was hard to mull giving the distracting noises coming from upstairs.

He nodded towards the empty vial.

"So that's why you gave me this antidote...in case your Mum spiked my soup?"

Bill shrugged. "I would have done it anyway, but…yes. While I can't actually swear fealty until you assume your lordship, I think that I can prove my worth to you between now and your birthday."

"You don't have to prove anything to me, Bill," Harry said dismissively, as he reached out his hand. The red-haired wizard smiled, and grabbed further up Harry's arm, as a kinsman might shake hands.

And then the moment of camaraderie was ruined by Molly's coarsely-worded encouragement for her husband to ride her like a hippogriff.

Bill, Harry and Hermione all winced. Fleur chuckled.

"Why don't you sleep on this?" Bill asked. "We should be able to find some more time to talk over the next few weeks."

"Without going to the same extremes, hopefully," added Hermione.

Harry nodded in agreement as he looked across the table. "You two are really going to stay here over the summer?"

Bill looked towards Fleur and shrugged. "When we joined the Order last month, our first orders from Dumbledore were to spend the summer here at the Burrow. Two extra wands, in-house protection during your stay and all that. Can't say that the sleeping arrangements are ideal…"

"Or ze 'overing of zee Queen Bee," Fleur added.

"Zat too," Bill teased, adding, "But we'll muddle through somehow."

A cry of passion caught all of their attentions. Bill looked towards the stairs, shook his head, then smiled slyly.

"Now if you'll excuse me, milord…I'd like to do a bit of muddling with my girlfriend while there's still a chance."

Hermione snorted. "Muddling? Is that what you kids call it these days?"

"You might zink about a bit of muddling yourself," Fleur said playfully, as she rose and pulled Bill towards the back door.

"Goodnight, you two," Bill said rather sheepishly. "Don't do anything that we wouldn't do."

Hermione chuckled. "Don't think that I don't know just how much latitude that gives us."

"Latitude?" asked Fleur with a wink. "Eez zat what you kids call it zees days?"

"Goodnight, Fleur…Good night, Bill," Hermione said with a wave and a sing-song tone of voice.

Once the older witch and wizard slipped outside, Harry and Hermione turned towards each other…each searching for a safer topic of conversation than talking about the elephant in the room (i.e. what she had done in the other room).

"So…not that I'm not happy to see you," said Harry. "But weren't you planning on spending more than a week or two with your parents?"

Hermione nodded. "That was the plan, until Madame Pomfrey made a house call last week."

"Poppy?" Harry asked. "You mean…you haven't fully healed yet?"

"Mostly," she replied. "Turns out that I almost used up my magical core fighting that curse…it's coming back, Harry, no worries. I'll be right as rain for the start of term…but she suggested that I help the process along by doing small amounts of magic each day."

"Spell casting?"

"Yes. Not supposed to do anything complicated right away…First Year spells for the first couple of weeks, then work my way up," Hermione explained. "I could have just as easily done this at home, if it weren't for those Underage Magic laws."

Harry frowned. "Can't you get a medical excuse, or something?"

Hermione sighed. "I could try, but the Ministry would need to approve it, and with me being Muggleborn…"

"It might get approved the day after you return to Hogwarts," Harry agreed. "So what makes being here different?"

This question earned Harry an eye-roll. "It turns out that the Ministry's sensors can't tell who casts a spell within a magical household. They monitor locations, not wands."

Harry frowned. "That makes sense, given the warnings I got for Dobby doing magic at my Aunt and Uncle's…or when I did accidental magic and blew up my Aunt Marge…but that means that last year, at Grimauld Place…"

"Exactly," Hermione replied. "We could have used magic to clean out all of those rooms, even though Molly claimed that we weren't allowed."

"Figures," Harry spat. "So you can do magic here, and the Ministry won't know?"

"You can too," Hermione nodded. "Just don't let Molly see you do it."

"Does she know that you are using magic?"

Hermione nodded. "The Headmaster and the Matron worked together to convince Mrs. Weasley. She didn't want to at first, but…she eventually agreed, so long as I promised to keep it a secret from Ron and Ginny."

"But not from me?" Harry asked.

His best friend shrugged. "Maybe she forgot?"

A loud shout from up the stairs caught their attention.

"Or maybe she was distracted by Fleur?" Harry asked playfully.

Hermione blushed, and looked down at the table, causing Harry to curse his stupidity.

"Sorry, didn't mean to be a git about it," he said.

She looked up and gave him a thin-lipped smile. "It's okay, Harry…just so long as you know why I did it, and don't make a big deal about it."

"Erm, okay, I can do that."

Hermione looked for the truth of that promise in his eyes. "Are you certain?" she asked. "Because I wouldn't want what happened to change things between us."

"Do you just want to pretend that it didn't happen?" Harry asked. "I guess that I could try, but honestly, that would be rather hard for me…"

"No, I couldn't hold you to that kind of promise," she admitted ruefully.

A funny thought came to Harry's mind, causing him to snort.

"What?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, nothing."

"Tell me!"

"Alright," Harry sheepishly replied. "I was just thinking that there was a way to put us back on an even footing."

" What? How?"

"Simple," Harry grinned. "You stay here while I go into the sitting room and…you know…"

Hermione blushed the deepest shade of red yet that evening.

"Harry!" she hissed. "Don't you dare!"

"Why not?" he asked glibly. "You know I'd do whatever it took to make things right between us."

"Yes, but…still, you just can't…"

Harry snorted. "Of course I can…not like I haven't done it before...wouldn't take any time at all, given what's gone on tonight."

Hermione winced and cradled her face in her hands. "I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?"

"Not unless you let me square things up."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"No, I'm Harry, Sirius is my…"

The cheeky, playful attitude faltered at the reminder of his late godfather.

"Oh, Harry…" Hermione said, pulling him into a hug.

And in that quiet moment, hormones won out over grief and Harry realized that his chest was pressed against hers. And then they both realized that the silence was a truer silence than they had heard over the past fifteen minutes.

Hermione broke away from the embrace and scowled. "She'll be checking on us soon enough," she whispered.

Harry grinned. "Guess you'll have to just imagine what I'll be doing tonight in my bed."

He waggled his eyebrows as he glanced towards the sitting room entrance.

"Harry!"

"What?" he asked with a grin. "Maybe I'll just be dreaming about Molly's delicious onion soup?"

"But the soup's on the boil over there," Hermione noted, pointing over his shoulder.

"It is, isn't it?" Harry grinned.

"Well you'll need this, then," Hermione said dismissively, as she handed him the spoon that had gone missing.

"Ah…you nicked it so that I couldn't…clever," said Harry. "But where have you been hiding it all this time?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Wouldn't he like to know what, Hermione," Molly asked from the stairwell.

The two teens turned towards Mrs. Weasley. She had, unfortunately, a certain look about her that was related to what she'd just accomplished with her now sleeping husband.

"Know how we did on our OWL's, of course," Hermione quickly stated.

"Where are Fleur and Bill?" Molly asked.

"He said something about checking the ward line," Hermione lied. "And since nobody is supposed to be out there alone…"

"Well of course she would volunteer," Molly snapped. She scowled, and looked down at her clock. Not seeing any immediate cause for even more concern, she looked back towards the two teens.

"Thought that you two were going to bed?" she asked.

"Oh, we were…hope you don't mind, but the soup was so good, I was just about to help myself to a second serving," Harry lied.

Molly smiled. "Of course, dear, but still…"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, Mrs. Weasley…we'll be off to bed now."

The matronly witch nodded in approval, and escorted the teenagers up the stairs. Percy's bedroom had also apparently migrated from the second floor to the first, with Ron's bedroom and a bathroom in between it and the Twins' old room.

Molly's careful eye kept Harry and Hermione from gaining any kind of resolution to many of the things that had been said and done that night…but not all.

"Sweet dreams, Harry," said Hermione, as she pulled him into a closely monitored hug.

"Of course…I promised, right?" he asked.

Hermione tilted her head back, then shook it as she broke free.

Harry winked at her as he wished her to have sweet dreams as well, then turned and wished Molly a good night. She kissed his cheek and shooed him into Fred and George's old room inits new place.

It looked exactly as he had remembered it before, except there being a number of storage boxes and half-open crates. Hedwig was waiting for his arrival on her perch, set beside an opened window. She greeted Harry with an owlish sort of scowl, expressing her frustration over the late hour, and the fact that he hadn't sought her out sooner. He apologized, she nibbled on his finger for his penance, then flew out into the night in search of a good meal.

This left Harry alone with his thoughts as he opened his trunk, changed into his pajamas, and crawled into bed. He considered what Bill and Fleur might be up to outside, then dwelled on what Hermione had allegedly done in the sitting room _(And where, exactly? On the sofa? One of the chairs? Lying on her back on the floor with her legs in the air? How would he be able to spend time with her in that room without thinking about it?)._

The consideration of these questions forced Harry to realize that he could never again think of his best friend as anything but a sexy and very attractive young woman. The scenes that he imagined alongside these questions…these smutty imaginings...they goaded him into slipping his hand down the front of his pajama bottoms, and making good on his promise as he relieved the hormone-driven pressures.

He had been right about it not taking any time at all.

As he cleaned up, Harry wondered if Hermione had been in her bed while he wanked, focusing on what he was doing and the promise he'd made that he would do it.

Down the hall, inside Percy's old room, Hermione lay in bed with a smile on her lips. While she was quite certain _what_ Harry was doing in his bed, she did allow herself to wonder whom he was thinking of while he was doing it.

But would she have the courage to ask Harry that question in the morning? That unanswered question made her dreams that night far more unsettled than sweet.

**oo00OO00oo**

**A/N: **I figure that most of the readers upset that this isn't an update to _Muggle Summer_ or one of my other WIPs would still rather see where my muse has taken me than not. This is a fleshed-out bunny born from another bunny born from a draft _Python Defense_ update. It begs to be continued, and begs to test my ability to keep a story from morphing into another runaway fic.

What this fic really does, though, is address my unhappiness and unanswered questions with HBP's _"An Excess of Phlegm"_ chapter. Why would Hermione be as catty as Ginny making fun of Fleur? Why would Harry leave that cattiness unchallenged? What was Hermione doing at the Burrow, two weeks into hols…don't her parents want to spend time with her? Was Harry saving Fleur from an Imperious'ed Viktor any less life-debt generating than what he did for Gabrielle? And where were Fleur and Bill sleeping that summer? Wouldn't have been under Molly's nose, unless there was an underlying reason (At least not if I was Bill, and engaged to a part-Veela.)


	2. Chapter 2  Other Hermione Plans

A Boon for Bill  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

**A/N: **Thanks for all of the positive comments about the first chapter in this story, and to everyone who commented and helped group-edit the draft version of this update.

Question of the day: Was anyone else out there bothered that JKR's Hermione was so shallow and her character so one-dimensional that she freaked-out when she learns that the OWL results were arriving that day, not five minutes after Harry told her the prophecy? Priorities much? It's still "killed, or worse...expelled?" Well, I was bothered about it.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 2: Different Hermione Plans**

Hermione's alarm clock woke her early the next morning by playfully swishing his tail across her nose.

"Geroff, Crookshanks," the Muggleborn witch mumbled. She swatted the tickling tail away from her face and pulled a pillow over her head as a guard against further attack.

"Meow!"

"Ten more minutes, Crooks?"

"Meowwww!"

"Oh, alright," Hermione muttered, sitting up in her bed. "Happy, now?"

Her familiar shook his head, then leapt off the bed towards the door.

"Meow?"

Hermione rubbed her eyes as Crookshanks began to prowl back and forth in front of the door with his tail up in the air.

"Do you really need to go out, or are you just getting fussy about using the box?"

The part-Kneazle's eyes darted towards the charmed litter box. He hissed at it, then shook his head and started to pace again.

"Then why do you…ah, is that it?" Hermione asked. She was now awake enough to match her familiar's aggressive tomcat behavior with the emotions she was sensing over their link. She was also aware enough to remember that emotions carried both ways over the connection, and blushed at the possibility that her somewhat pervy dreams that night may have affected Crookshanks's libido.

"Feeling the need to wander?"

"Hisssss….."

"Now, don't you start blaming me… and just you remember who it was that convinced my parents not to have you neutered!"

"..._me-ow_."

"That's better," Hermione noted with satisfaction. She pulled her wand out and cast a _Tempus _(one of the Matron-approved low-powered charms).

"Right, then…early enough to do my treatment regimen before Ron or Ginny wake up."

"Meow?"

"Sorry, Crookshanks…it can't be helped. I can't cast tripping jinxes on things that can't walk, and there's nobody else that I can practice on."

"Meow?"

"Okay, I promise to ask Harry today about volunteering to be your replacement…and once I'm done you'll be free to do your tom-catting."

Crookshanks looked up at his human and let out the feline equivalent of a sigh. He didn't care to be a living target for her spells, but he had gained enough intelligence from the familiar bond to recognize the need. And after receiving some of Hermione's thoughts and emotions across that same bond the previous night he really, really needed to follow the scents that would lead him to a certain barn on the other side of the Weasley's orchard.

He purred, bowed his head, and slowly walked towards the ersatz spell firing range on the far side of the room.

**oo00OO00oo**

Ten minutes later, sweat was dripping off of Hermione's bushy-brown hair. She pushed herself to cast one last jinx, then used the hem of her sleeveless nightgown to mop her brow.

"Right, then…that's enough," she declared in between large breaths. The spell casting had been exhausting, and she still had to cast a half-dozen other spells that worked on inanimate objects.

Crookshanks hissed his agreement and sauntered towards the closed bedroom door.

Hermione would have liked to have adjusted his attitude with a cheering charm, but that was a spell taught to Third-Years. So the best she could do was squat down and rub Crookshanks's back.

"Now you behave yourself out there," she said.

"Meow?"

"You know what I mean," Hermione teased as she picked up her familiar and pulled him into a hug.

"Don't act like a pompous git when you get there," she whispered into his ear. "Don't be preening and prancing about…even if you are the smartest, hottest, most handsome tom around. Treat your girl right…"

"Meow!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Girls, then. Honestly, Crooks…how many do you have in that barnyard harem of yours?"

The part-Kneazle purred proudly.

"Just promise me that you'll make sure that their needs are met too?…Don't be a Ron, be a Harry!"

"Meow?"

"Stop it!" Hermione hissed, giving Crookshanks a squeeze in protest. "You know I haven't…and certainly not with Ron!"

"Meow…?"

Hermione snorted. "Just how much of my dreams did you see last night?"

"_Rrrrrrrw!"_

"Right. Well, you'll probably be the first to know if that ever _did_ happen…maybe second, if Hedwig's bond is stronger than yours…"

"_Hiss_!"

"Oh, Crooks…enough," she decided, placing her familiar back down onto the floor. Hermione reached for the door knob and, after one last caution, allowed him to escape out into the hallway.

As her familiar began tracking his harem's scents, Hermione listened for signs that others were up and about. Not hearing any, she let her eyes drift up towards the door to the Twins' old bedroom…the one that Harry was now using at the end of the hallway. She smiled when a naughty thought crossed her mind about Harry following her scent…without Fleur's help it would have been easy enough for him to track her to the sitting room. But with work to be done, she pushed that idea to the side, quietly closed her own bedroom door, and returned to her magical therapy session.

Hermione's mind drifted back to First Year as she progressed through the balance of the approved spell list. She thought about the people, places and events associated with each spell as it was cast. An _Alohamora _returned her to the Third-floor gauntlet that they'd run to protect the stone. Her matchstick-turned needle brought back memories of her very first Transfiguration class, and all of the emotion that came with it (she'd nearly asked a Prefect how to cast a drying charm that day, just in case she wet her pants from all of her anxieties and excitement). And then there was _Wingardium Leviosa_…

The feather fell back down onto Percy's old desk almost as quickly as it had risen. Hermione recast the spell four times, but failed to achieve a better result. There was just too much history associated with that spell for her to maintain any kind of focus. It was the spell that provoked Ron's cutting remarks about her being a nightmare…remarks that seemed to confirm her worst fears about remaining scorned and friendless. But it was also was the spell that saved her when it separated the troll's club from his hand later that day…and sparked a friendship and sense of belonging that had endured to _this_ day.

At least with respect to Harry's friendship. Ron had acted like a git towards her too many times over the years, and his typically self-centered oafish attitudes had been in full appearance in the days since her arrival. His rude behavior had been bad enough for even his mother to admit to it, but her excuses were wearing thin, and did nothing to explain how Ron treated her before he was attacked by cognivores. She'd do her best to put up with it, at least for Harry's sake…she wouldn't want to force him into having to choose between friendships. And so long as she needed to hide her medicinal magic use under the mantle of a full wizarding household…well, she'd just have to be all the more tolerant, and diligent when it came to maintaining her regiment of love potion neutralizers.

This wasn't to say that Harry and her healing weren't the only up-sides to her staying at the Burrow for the balance of the hols. Bill and Fleur had been great, not just with their warning and supply of antidote, but with their friendliness. Hermione would have never have imagined that she could build a friendship with the part-Veela, but that was what was quickly happening. Of course, Fleur had her own motivations working…it was good to have a friend or ally nearby when you are thrust into a difficult situation in a foreign country, and forced to deal with a potion-brewing matron and her catty teenage daughter. Hermione had also considered the possibility that Fleur was being nice to her only because she was Harry's best friend, and Fleur needed Harry's help. But there'd be time enough over the summer to test motivations, and in the meantime she enjoyed the French witch's company and support.

The need for Bill and Fleur to ask Harry for a boon came to Hermione's mind as she twisted the white practice feather in between her fingers, and thought more about that first Hogwarts Halloween. Fleur's belief that she owed a Harry a life-debt couldn't be any stronger than Hermione's belief that a life-debt was created when Harry rescued her from the troll. And once Hermione began to compare circumstances, she couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to repay that debt by offering her best friend her heart and soul… and body. It was a thought that both terrified and excited her sexually. To have Veela heritage as an excuse for doing all sorts of naughty things to Harry…or at least to offer doing them, because Harry was too noble to call in that sort of debt that way…

Hermione, however, had to face the fact that she wasn't part-Veela. And as much as she might secretly fantasize about a progressively physical relationship with her best friend, she wasn't ready to go all the way...and Harry already had enough on his plate to worry about without keeping a girlfriend happy. But most anything short of going all of the way…done with a best friend willing to share certain benefits without strings attached? That was a goal worth striving for, in _Carpe diem_ fashion. It was also, however, a goal that needed to be worked towards.

Hermione chuckled as she dropped her wand and the feather onto the desktop, amazed at what had happened the night before. She figured that with Fleur's tactical use of her allure that she could place a tick next to the first step in her plan…to get Harry to start thinking of her as a girl. Groping him under the table and masturbating while he was in the next room might have been overkill, but there didn't appear to be any harm caused. Harry's cheeky behavior right before bed was actually encouraging.

What happened after Harry's arrival also did much to advance her second step in the plan. It wasn't enough for him to know that she was an attractive young woman; he had to recognize and accept that she was a sexually mature young woman, one whose needs and urges might not be any less than his own hormonally-driven needs.

The Muggleborn witch had taken a bit of a risk and asked her mother for some advice on how best to complete this task. Mrs. Granger had been not only helpful, but creative in her approach to the problem. Neither Hermione nor her mum thought it would be wise for her to change Harry's way of thinking about her by acting too drastically out of character. If their close friendship was going to be the grounding for any added physical dimension, then she needed to mostly stay true to the person that Harry had befriended. Special dispensations could be granted for situations that couldn't be helped (like her response to Fleur's allure). But in all other situations, slit skirts, sudden use of makeup, or over-the-top flirting wouldn't do. So what would?

Hermione smiled to herself as she looked over her shoulder towards the bedroom door. She again listened for any signs that anyone else was up in the house. Hearing none, she reached down and pulled the hem of her nightgown up and over her head. As the summer-weight garment dropped to the floor she hooked her thumbs inside the elastic of her knickers and pushed them down towards her ankles. Stepping out of the leg holes, the now-naked witch walked over to her nightstand and picked up a jar of magical salve. Hermione unscrewed the top and dug into its contents with her fingers. Once an appropriate amount of salve was removed, she walked in front of a full-length mirror that had been placed there for her benefit (it was the only change made to a bedroom that stood ready for Percy's much hoped-for return just as he had left it).

A scar that stretched from left collarbone down to right hip stared back at Hermione when she looked into the mirror. The swelling was gone, but not the dark purple hue. Madame Pomfrey had warned Hermione that the scar would not disappear completely, but hoped that daily application of the salve would at least lessen the discoloration. Fleur had suggested that a good base tan would also minimize the contrast, causing Hermione to giggle at the thought of helping the French witch turn the Burrow's small pond into a clothing optional beach. What a scandal that would cause! Although it would also allow her to add several ticks to her step-by-step plans if Harry joined them…

Hermione centered her thoughts back to the more modest next step to her plan as she spread the salve down the length of her scar. Harry needed to realize that she was a sexual being without her acting like a tart. This would be accomplished by adding sex-related words, phrases and issues to her everyday conversations with Harry. Not in a salacious manner, but matter-of-factly; she was a smart, mature young woman who treated Harry like the smart, mature young man he was (for the most part). Facts were facts, anatomical parts and biological processes were normal, natural and a part of every one's lives. There was no reason why two best friends couldn't use appropriate terms and talk frankly about sexual issues just because they were different genders. Right?

As she stood before the mirror, Hermione congratulated herself on the successful incorporation of the word "masturbation" into the last night's conversation with Harry. While an obvious situation had been provided to use the term in an appropriate context, it was still an accomplishment that she'd been able to talk about what she had done with only moderate amounts of blushing, stammering, and embarrassment. And that had only been possible through lots of practice.

To that end, Hermione remained in front of the mirror after she'd finished applying the salve, and using a voice that was quiet, but also firm and confident, began to point out body parts and associated processes.Hermione then imagined that she was looking at Harry's naked body, and called out some correlative bits, and the ways that those bits might be stimulated.

Once she ran through the list a few times, and was satisfied with her unabashed delivery and unwavering voice, she took the next step, and incorporated this vocabulary within set phrases and complete sentences. The first time through, she voiced statements that would be right at home within a dry academic setting (for example, _"The female orgasm is most readily achieved through direct clitoral stimulation.")._ But once that was done, Hermione began to practice situation-specific sentences that she could imagine using with Harry.

"_Honestly, Harry…what you call 'moistened knickers' is a common physiological response when females are subjected to external sexual stimuli…"_

"_Don't worry, Harry…Premature ejaculation is quite common among adolescent males. I've done some research, and would be happy to walk you through a few exercises…"_

"_There's nothing to be embarrassed about, Harry…studies show that the average teenage male experiences an erection every fourteen minutes, on average…"_

"_Oh Harry…there's obviously no correlation between big shoe sizes and above-average penis lengths…just look at how small your feet are, for example."_

Hermione couldn't help herself and let out a very un-Hermione-like giggle after that last one. But then she heard someone out in the hallway, and made a dash for her covers.

She couldn't wait until she was cleared to begin casting silencing charms again.

Once she was reasonably certain that she hadn't been heard (for that would have surely led to somebody barging into the room), she slipped off the covers and reached for bathrobe and shower kit. So long as that was only one Weasley that she heard, there was still a chance for a shower before the morning queue formed.

**oo00OO00oo**

One hour later, Harry Potter was jarred awake by what sounded like canon fire. He bolted upright, and tried to simultaneously retrieve the wand that he had placed underneath his pillow and the glasses that he had placed on the nightstand.

Someone threw open the curtains, filling the bedroom with painfully bright light.

"What the hell?" he shouted towards the closest blurry figure.

That figure closed the distance to Harry's bed and slapped him on the top of his head.

"Why didn't you wake us, you berk!"

"Ron, don't hit him! And, Harry, language!"

The black-haired wizard snorted as he finally was able to shove his glasses onto his face. The wide grin that came into focus on his assailant's face seemed to match poorly with the level of just-delivered violence. Then again, there always was something just a bit off with Ron Weasley.

"Doin' okay there, mate?" asked the red-haired teen.

Harry rolled his eyes as he rubbed his scalp and leaned back against the headboard.

"Never better…you?"

"Can't complain too much," Ron replied, as he pulled a wooden crate towards the edge of the bed and sat down. Hermione walked over from the window and chose to sit on the edge of the mattress, close enough to reach out and greet Harry with a light squeeze on his leg.

"Have a nice lie-in, then?" she asked playfully.

"Erm... yeah, I did, thanks, just like I promised you last night," Harry replied cautiously.

There might have been more warmth in this response had Hermione's grab not reminded him of the previous night, and caused him to worry whether his blankets were bunched up high enough (and in the right places) to conceal his erection.

Hermione released a barely-voiced gasp and she involuntarily looked down at Harry's duvet. The she caught herself, looked back up towards his face, and smiled.

"Well, then," she said coyly. "I guess we're all square."

Harry responded with a slightly embarrassed smile

"What's all this about?" asked Ron turning towards Hermione. "Were you up last night when Harry arrived?"

"Not when he arrived, but… Crookshanks woke me," she explained.

"And you didn't wake me up as well? Why not?" Ron demanded.

"Because you were asleep and snoring loud enough to raise the dead!" Hermione claimed.

"Doesn't matter… you should have…"

"Ron, it really was late when we arrived last night," Harry interjected. "And your Mum ordered us to bed just seconds after Hermione came down them."

"Hmmmph!" Ron snorted dismissively. It wasn't hard for him imagine his mother doing that but he still didn't like being left out…and he didn't like the thought of his friends going "to bed" (regardless of whether there were separate beds involved). But what he really, really didn't like was the way that Hermione was sitting on Harry's bed, with her hand still resting on his leg.

While Ron was staring at Hermione's hand, her eyes were locked on Harry's. Agreement was reached with the slightest of head nods over his selective presentation of the facts (while Molly had indeed ordered Hermione back to bed seconds after she came down, Ron didn't need to know that those orders were ignored).

"I still don't…" growled the red-haired wizard. He looked up and asked, "There isn't anything going on here that I should know about, is there?"

"No, of course not," Harry snapped defensively.

"Why would you think that?" Hermione asked sharply.

That question was seconded by a sweet-sounding voice drifting in from the doorway.

"I zink zat zere eez nothing 'ere for your worries, Ronald... don't you?"

The red-haired wizard's eyes went wide. A goofy-looking smile formed on his face as a slight bulge formed in his trousers. He faced the doorway, and gazed lustfully at the French witch that had just entered the bedroom.

"There is nothing here for my worries," agreed Ron, using a robotic tone of voice.

Fleur nodded at the teenager and smiled.

"'Arry and 'Ermione are just good friends," she declared.

Ron nodded in agreement. "Harry and Hermione are just good friends."

The part-Veela placed a hand on Ron's shoulder and smiled sweetly.

"Zeeze are not ze droids zat you are looking for."

Ron smiled dreamily. "These are not the droids that I am looking for."

"Very good, Ronald," Fleur replied huskily. "Now, you are feeling zertain needs, no?"

"Oh, yes!" he hissed.

"Zen perhaps you should find a private place to take care of ze needs?"

The red-haired teen sucked in a deep breath, looked around the room, then bolted for the door. Fleur released him with a wry smile, an expression that she shared with the other witch in the room.

The only wizard left in the room was more shocked than bemused, but that was to be expected.

"Did you just…zap Ron with your allure?" Harry asked.

Fleur shrugged her shoulders.

"Almost no need," she claimed. "Ronald… he acts like ze dogs of Pavlov."

"Whose dogs?" asked Harry.

Hermione snorted. "Pavlov, a Muggle scientist," she explained. "Fleur means that she's got Ron trained well enough to nearly ejaculate just at the sound of her voice."

Harry's head swiveled and he gave his best friend a sharp gaze. Filing away for future discussion her choice of words, he turned back to Fleur to ask more pressing questions.

"Muggle references and Jedi mind tricks?"

Fleur smiled impishly. "I am full of ze surprises, no?"

"But you didn't even need to look into his eyes this time," Hermione noted.

The French witch chuckled as she crossed the room and sat down on Ron's crate. She reached out, grabbed Hermione's knee, and purred. "You are zo perceptive, 'Ermione! Eet was….how you say…ze area effect spell."

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows, then shook her head as she reached out and pulled down Harry's covers. Waving almost dismissively towards his crotch, she asked, "But how could it be a male-impacting area effect if it didn't affect Harry?"

Focusing more on what Hermione had just exposed than what she had just asked, Harry cried "Hey!" and hastily pulled the covers back…but not before Fleur had the opportunity to make a wide-eyed observation.

"'Ermione why do you say zere was no effect on 'arry? Eet certainly looks like 'e had ze reaction magnifique!"

"What?" asked the Muggleborn witch. She looked towards Harry's midsection, then snorted after a few moments of thought.

"You mean Harry's erection?" she asked Fleur. Waving a hand dismissively, she declared, "That's nothing."

"Hey!" her best friend cried indignantly.

"Nothing?" asked Fleur. "Perhaps only in comparison to ze bits of a dragon?"

Harry's eyes darted towards the French witch. He didn't know whether to thank her for her support or chastise her for making the underlying observation.

Hermione chuckled. "No, no, there's clear evidence that Harry's penis is above average in length. What I meant to say is that there is nothing unusual about Harry having an erection right now. He's always got one first thing in the morning."

"Hey!" Harry cried, even more indignantly.

Fleur giggled. "And you know ze facts 'ow, 'Ermione?"

The bushy-haired witch rolled her eyes. "From having to barge into Harry's dormitory so many times to drag his sorry arse out of bed so that he isn't late for class."

"Hermione!"

She turned towards her upset friend and patted his leg.

"Yes, Harry, language. Would you rather I say buttocks?"

"No!"

"Then are you are disputing the fact that I have to roust you out of bed when you oversleep?"

"No, I'm disputing your need to look at my bits when you do!"

"Ah," she replied knowingly. Then she sighed, and added, "There is nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Your erection is a perfectly normal physiological response to the pressure placed on the male prostate gland by a full bladder."

"I don't care!"

"Oh, honestly, Harry. It's no different from you staring at my hardened nipples whenever we enter a cold room. Or, for that matter, when I get zapped by Fleur's magical pheromones, like last night."

"But…"

"Relax, Harry, I'm not upset by your staring. You can't help the fact that you're a teenage boy with teenage levels of testosterone. It doesn't mean that you find me sexually attractive; it's an involuntary evolutionary response, after all…wouldn't matter if it's my nipples, or Fleur's, or Molly's that catch your eye."

"Hey!"

"Hay is for horses, Harry," Hermione quipped.

"Well, talk about certain people's nipples is for-bidden!"

"But it proves my point?"

"It also makes me want to hurl!" Harry hissed. He then thoughtfully added, "The idea of me staring at Molly's, I mean. Nothing upsetting about yours…because, Hermione, you have a very attractive pair of…"

"Perhaps zis admiration of each other's bits eez better for another time?" Fleur teased.

Harry looked at the French witch and blushed.

"Excuse me," he asked, pulling enough of his covers down to swing his legs over the side of the bed. "Now that the thought of Molly's pair has caused some serious shrinkage, I'm going to go to the loo while I can."

As made his way past Fleur she looked down at his pajama bottoms and made a comment in French that he didn't understand. Hermione did, though, based on the chuckling that he heard behind his back as he opened the door and walked into the hallway. He might have stopped and asked for a translation, but he really did have a full bladder. He could see light spilling out into the hall from the door to the new bathroom, and didn't want to risk the chance that someone would beat him to it.

After finishing his pressing business, Harry washed up and walked back out into the hall. Ron's bedroom door was shut, but not soundly enough to keep certain noises from escaping into the hallway. The-Boy-Who-Lived snorted, and quickly made his way back to his room. When he opened the door he stopped short of entering…bedazzled by what he walked in on. Fleur and Hermione were sitting very close to one another on his bed, conversing in French. While the words were incomprehensible to Harry, their meaning seemed clear enough from the seductive way that they sounded, and the way that they were voiced. And then there was body language…as Fleur said something to Hermione, she reached forward and exposed some cleavage as she grabbed the Muggleborn's thigh for emphasis.

"Wow!" he muttered, as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

The two witches stopped their conversation and turned towards him with shared smiles.

"Something wrong, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"No, it's just…when you walk into your bedroom and find two pretty witches sitting on your bed...if Ron were with me he'd probably run right back to his room and lock the door again."

"Oh, 'Arry…you know just 'ow to flatter a girl," Fleur teased, as he walked towards them and took a seat on the unoccupied crate. "But why do you not 'ave ze same reaction?"

Harry smiled. "Ah, but Fleur…I am already in my bedroom, and just closed the door."

"Do you need some private time, zen?" Fleur teased.

The teen-aged wizard closed his eyes for a moment and smiled as he shook his head.

"Thanks for the offer, but it sounds like Molly and Ginny are putting together a breakfast tray. Wouldn't care to have them walk in on me…and that probably goes for Ron as well. You must have really zapped him, Fleur…he's still at it!"

Hermione looked towards the door and snorted.

"Ron should have only needed a minute or two," she noted. "He must be trying for two ejaculations."

"Hermione!" Harry protested.

"What?" she asked. "There's empirical evidence."

"I don't care, it's still not right to talk about it."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Harry, I thought that after last night...you didn't have any problems acting like an adult while we discussed my physiological response to the release of Fleur's allure."

"Time and place," Harry countered. "I mean, shouldn't we be more worried about what Ron is going to do or say when he returns?"

"Why should it matter?" Hermione asked. "Was Ron right to worry that you and I are becoming more than just good friends?"

"Perhaps friends wiz benefits?" the other witch asked.

"Fleur!" Harry and Hermione chided in tandem.

"Oh, sorry eef I spoke too soon," the part-Veela coyly replied demurly. "But do not worry, 'Arry…when Ron returns 'e will not remember what 'appened before. Ze affect makes 'im… like 'e eez shagged senseless, as you say?"

Hermione nodded. "Just like Molly isn't going to think that anything strange happened last night."

Harry frowned. "But what about you?" he asked. "How do you remember about last night?"

His best friend snorted. "There are certain things that are very hard to forget."

"Oh, yeah," Harry agreed. "But you know what I mean."

Hermione nodded. "It helps a lot if you know that there is going to be a release beforehand, and have enough time to brace for the attack. Bill also lent me a book on Occlumency that I've read through a few times, and practiced some of the meditation exercises. Come to think of it, that's probably what kept you from being affected just now."

Harry shook his head, and recalled the pre-match festivities at the World Cup final. Fleur nodded her head, thinking that it was interesting that on both occasions, Hermione had been by Harry's side. Fearing the implications might be too much too soon, Hermione leaned her head forward, and said that Harry's resistance probably had more to do with his ability to shake off the _Imperius_ curse.

Further exploration of this topic was cut off when the door swung open and a young red-haired witch walked in unannounced, carrying a full tray of breakfast items.

"Rise and shine, sleepy…head," Ginny called out. The smile on her face dropped when she noticed who was in Harry's bedroom, and where. Molly walked in right behind Ginny, and seemed almost as upset. Her concerns, however, were more focused on who wasn't in Harry's bedroom, rather than who was. She immediately turned and shouted out into the hallway.

"Ronald?"

"He just stepped out for a little while, Mrs. Weasley" Hermione said quickly.

Molly paid no attention to the excuse and strode out into the hall.

Harry couldn't help a snort from escaping his nose as Molly went hunting for the son who should have been informally chaperoning Harry, Hermione, and Fleur. He could just imagine the scene if she walked in on Ron before he was done with his allure-addled business.

It wouldn't be very pretty. Funny as hell… but still not very pretty.

Molly's scolding carried easily into the bedroom. That her concerns were more about his location, rather than what he had been doing at that location, indicated that he had at least managed to avoid reliving that kind of embarrassment. The red-haired wizard was clear-eyed as he entered Harry's bedroom and muttered a greeting (his mum's tirade effectively clearing the lusty cobwebs from his head). Molly was on his heels, and now that Ron was accounted for turned her attentions to her unwanted French house guest.

"You should have been at your station already," she stated sharply.

Fleur looked at a wall clock and frowned.

"Eet takes only a few minutes to walk out zere, and zere is steel ten minutes to go."

"That doesn't matter," Molly said dismissively. "So long as you are doing anything…productive…you might as well head outside. Mundungus has been out there all night, you know."

"Dung?" Harry snorted. "Well that makes me feel a whole lot safer."

"Harry!" Hermione hissed.

"What?" he challenged. "Last year? Privet Drive? Dementors?"

"Still…"

Molly glared at the raven-haired wizard. She started to chastise him, but was distracted when her sight lines were blocked by a head of blonde hair.

"Well…enjoy your breakfast, 'Arry," Fleur told Harry, after swooping down and planting kisses on each of his cheeks. " I will be 'ere for ze evening dinner. And eef you wish to visit me before zen…"

"He will do nothing of the sort!" Molly declared.

The French witch ignored the retort as she leaned towards Hermione and kissed her cheeks as well. Ron moaned out loud when he spotted a hint of Fleur's cleavage. The part-Veela turned towards the red-haired wizard and smiled. She walked up to him and planted nothing-but-air kisses on his face. Ron reacted as if she had shoved her tongue down his throat, and might have had an embarrassing sticky release had it not been for his solitary efforts just a few minutes previous.

The breakfast tray still held in Ginny's hand served as an effective barrier, and there was no way in hell that Fleur was about to physically say her good-byes to Ginny's mum. She thought it polite enough to nod as she gracefully floated out of the room.

Molly reacted by making a noise that sounded like a cross between a loud fart and the sound that Crookshanks made when he expelled fur balls from his throat.

"Mum hates her," Ginny told Harry.

"I do not!" Molly protested. "I just think that there hasn't been enough time for Bill to make a decision like that."

"You mean about their engagement?" Harry asked innocently.

"They're not officially engaged, Harry."

"They've also been working together at Gringott's for a whole year," Ron mumbled, his eyes fixed firmly on the door that Fleur had closed behind her exit.

"Well that's not enough time!"

"How long were you and Mr. Weasley engaged?" Harry asked.

"They weren't, Harry," Ginny said slyly. "Mum and Dad eloped."

"That doesn't matter!" Molly said indignantly. "Your father and I knew each other for several years before that."

"Yeah, the seven years you both lived in Gryffindor Tower?" Ginny noted.

"No sense in waiting when two people realize that they are perfect for each other," Molly snapped.

Harry's eyebrows inched involuntarily towards his scar. Hermione stifled an incredulous snort. Ginny rolled her eyes, while her brother's eyes were still fixed on the door.

The youngest Weasley's reaction caught Harry off-guard. He wondered whether this a sign of rebellion…a signal that, when coupled with her sly comment about her parent's elopement, indicated that Ginny wished to stand independently of her over-bearing mother and her mother's ways. But then she called Fleur a "cow" and "Phlegm" in between Molly's rants about the part-Veela not being the right one for her Bill, and decided that Ginny was just acting catty on an equal-opportunity basis.

There was no chance to challenge the witch's comments so long as her mum was dominating the conversation. Molly went on and on about Fleur until she ran out of breath, saving just enough air to chide Harry about eating his eggs while they were still warm. She then turned and left the room, calling for Ginny to bring Harry's breakfast dishes back down to the kitchen once he was finished.

Harry's eyes gravitated towards Hermione's just as soon as Molly's back was turned, and they both broke out into giggles.

"What's so funny?" Ginny demanded, as she finally gave Harry a chance to eat some breakfast by setting the tray onto his lap.

"Oh, nothing," Harry replied quickly. "Just wondering how long it's going to take for Ron to regain his wits."

"What?" asked Ron.

"What makes you think that he ever had any to begin with?" Ginny asked.

Harry snorted, and once again noted the young witch's general level of bitchiness.

"Can't help it!" Ron protested. "They way that she floats around the room…"

"And you haven't gotten used to it over the last couple of days?" Harry asked.

"Well sure…but then she goes and surprise kisses you…can't be helped."

"Of course it can," Hermione countered. She waved towards her best friend and added, "He's only been here a few hours, and Harry's isn't drooling over Fleur like an idiot, is he?"

Ron frowned, and furrowed his eyebrows as he gave Harry a calculating inspection. He somehow, miraculously, managed not to ask the black-haired wizard whether or not he was a poofter. Not that it mattered…his thoughts were clearly understood by everyone else in the room.

Ginny smiled, and coyly said, "Well maybe Harry's heart belongs to another, and that love shields him from Fleur's attacks?"

Ron snorted dismissively. Harry found enough to like within these comments to smile, and say, "Maybe so, Ginny…maybe so."

This made Ginny smile brilliantly…until Harry turned and gave Hermione a rakish wink.

"If Mum has anything to say about it, you won't have to worry about Fleur for much longer," said Ginny.

"Why?" Harry asked. "From what I heard last night, Bill and Fleur are staying here for the rest of hols to help with security."

"Bah!" spat Ginny. "I still don't know why we are staying here in the first place. I mean…last year we all stayed at Headquarters because the Burrow supposedly wasn't safe enough…what's different this year?"

Harry shrugged. "Maybe now that the place is cleaned up they don't need a captive work force to stay there?"

"It is a good question," said Hermione.

The black-haired wizard nodded. "To which I actually have a good answer…because I asked it myself last night when Dumbledore picked me up."

Hermione waited for a beat, and then asked, "…..And?"

"And the answer is that he didn't know until last night whether it was safe for anyone to stay at Grimmauld Place," Harry replied. "When Sirius died…I was told only last night that he left the house to me, but the Headmaster was afraid that it could only go to a pureblood like Bellatrix. Or that Draco might have a stronger claim to becoming the Head of House Black. And if either of them had access, then…"

"Then it'd be Death Eaters battling the doxies, rather than us," Ginny said.

"Exactly."

"But you said 'until last night'," Hermione noted.

"Yes, I did," Harry replied. "Dumbledore came up with a simple test to solve the question."

"Gringott's inheritance test?" asked Ginny.

"Hope not…heard that's rather bloody," said Ron.

Harry shook his head. "It was a simple test that didn't involve blood…not that I wasn't thinking about spilling some blood when Kreacher responded to my call…"

"What?" asked Ginny.

"Kreacher is bound to whoever owns Headquarters," Harry replied quietly. "The Headmaster asked me to summon Kreacher, and if he appeared to then issue him an order. Well he did pop to me, and he shut his mouth when I told him to."

"So that means you are Lord Black, now?" Ron asked in a raised voice.

Harry shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of. Probably at most the heir...heir apparent, right Hermione?"

"That's right."

"Not that I'll expect you to call me milord if I'm wrong. Sirius never had us doing that…"

The corners of Hermione's eyes were wet as she picked the tray off of Harry's lap, set it aside, and pulled him into a hug.

"Oh, Harry," she whispered. "That was an awful thing for Dumbledore to ask you to do!"

"Thanks," he replied, as his face found warmth in her brown bushy hair.

"That means that it _would_ be safe for us to stay at Headquarters," Ginny concluded.

"Why would we want to do that?" Ron asked. "Can't play Quidditch there, can you?"

"Because then we could send Phlegm away," Ginny reasoned.

Ron thought for a moment. His cheeks flushed and his eyes dilated as he repeated his question.

"Why would we want to do that?"

"Bah! You're disgusting!" Ginny replied, knowing full well what the small bump in her brother's trousers meant.

Harry was too glum to call Ginny out on her name calling. "Don't expect that I'll be able to play even if we stay here," he noted.

"Why not?" Ron challenged. "Thought your ban was lifted at the end of term?"

"That's what the Headmaster told me," Harry countered. "But he apparently got ahead of himself."

"What do you mean?"

"The ban was issued by Umbridge, but enforced by the Ministry," Harry explained. "And the Ministry works at its own moronic pace."

"Oy!"

"Except for your father, of course."

"Why would Dumbledore tell you it was lifted before it was lifted?" asked Ron.

"Maybe he was too used to being Headmaster, Chief Warlock and Head of the ICW all at the same time?" Hermione asked.

"But it is going to be lifted before September…right?" Ron asked.

Harry shrugged. "Hope so. But in the mean time, I still can't legally fly."

"Legal…smeegal!" Ron said disdainfully. "No harm in you playing two-v-two pick-up games, right?"

"Have to ask your mum," said Harry. "Maybe it's best not to do anything out of turn now that your dad's got a promotion?"

"That shouldn't matter!" Ron spat. "Why, I'm going to go talk to mum right now and straighten this out…"

Harry reached out and stopped his friend by grabbing hold of his arm.

"Hold on, Ron," he asked. "Plenty of time for that later…and we've got more important things to talk about right now."

"What? You're daft, mate! What could be more important than practicing for the upcoming season?"

Harry and Hermione sighed in tandem. He looked towards Ginny, who didn't look to be leaving anytime soon…which was a problem. Harry wanted to reveal the Prophecy to Ron and Hermione…but not to Ginny. At least not yet.

The black-haired teenager purposely set his tea cup down on the platter.

"Thanks for bringing me breakfast, Ginny…guess I'm not as hungry right now as your mum figured I'd be."

The younger witch waved away Harry's concerns.

"Oh, that doesn't matter…what do you need to tell us, Harry?"

"Well…"

Not seeing a way to encourage Ginny to leave the room without raising her suspicions, Harry began a full accounting of his introduction to Horace Slughorn. This included the relaying of Dumbledore's comments about the potion master's habit of cultivating politically and socially advantageous relationships with certain students.

"No doubt he'll be polishing you up," Hermione told Harry.

"I don't quite like the sound of that, thank you very much."

"He would polish Fleur in a heartbeat," Ron reasoned, getting that dreamy look in his eyes again. He glanced towards the opened window and added, "I know I would."

"Arrrgh!" Ginny hissed. "Will you stop mooning over Phleghm!"

"Stop it, Ginny," Harry asked. "I don't like hearing you call Fleur names."

"So she's got you under her spell too?" asked Ginny.

"I don't like it one bit either," Hermione said sharply.

The younger witch rolled her eyes. "You too, Hermione? Maybe you'd like to polish off the cow at the same time?"

"Enough!" Harry said sternly.

Ginny looked at the firm expressions on Harry and Hermione's faces. Then she turned and saw the goofy grin on her brother's face.

"Daft! The lot of you!" she hissed as she turned her back on the other three and walked towards the window.

"I can just see her out there," Ginny spat. "With her robes unbuttoned and her skirt hiked up high, shamelessly working on that oh so perfect tan…"

"You can really see her?" Ron asked, with a mixture of hope and lust in his voice.

"Of course not," his sister replied dismissively. "Bill's got the ward line set so far out, you'd need a hawkeye spell to see her...or maybe…"

Ginny was distracted by a shiny object sitting in an opened box on the far side of the window.

"Or maybe a telescope!" she declared, walking over and pulling out a cylindrical brass object.

Ron was too loopy to warn his sister about the risks involved when touching anything in their brothers' old room. Harry and Hermione hadn't been pranked enough by the Twins to learn that lesson the hard way, and Ginny's bat-bogey hex was too good for her to have learned that way either. So, filled of certainty that Fleur really was dressed as she imagined, Ginny held the telescope up to her eye and began to search for demonstrable proof.

_Bang! _

"Ginny!" shouted Hermione and Harry.

The witch who had disappeared within a puff of black smoke emerged from that smoke with the prank telescope in her left hand, and a magnificent shiner over her right eye.

"Squeezed…poked…_cough_!" she rasped, looking down at the small boxing glove that swung from a coil attached to the eyepiece.

"No worries, Mum can fix that right up for you," said Ron, who was just coherent enough to realize the risks involved if he found humor in the situation.

Harry and Hermione nodded in agreement, and asked Ginny if she was okay. Neither thought the prank to be very funny, and knew that they could have just as easily been its victims.

Ginny pulled a small mirror from a pocket and held it up to her face. She shrieked, and barreled out of the room and down the stairs.

"Mum can fix that," Ron said with confidence. "She's really good with healing potions, and fixing minor injuries and stuff."

Harry nodded, thinking more about Molly's brewing skills than her healing talents. He felt sorry for Ginny, even as he realized that her bad fortune had given him the opportunity he needed.

"Well, so long as Ginny's in good hands," he began, "There's something else you two need to know about last night."

"What's that?" asked Ron.

"Dumbledore says that he's going to be giving me private lessons this year."

"What for?" asked Ron.

"Probably has something to with the prophecy…."

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione and Ron both gave Harry, and the secrets that Harry revealed to them, the complete focus that they deserved. Questions were asked with hushed whispers, and when answers were available they were whispered in reply. Hermione was horrified and despondent and fearful all at the same time, and spent most of that time of full disclosure crying into Harry's shoulder. Ron didn't cry, but he didn't joke about the situation either, which was a major step for him. And if either of the other two realized that Ron's focus was aided by having Harry's breakfast leftovers within reach, they held their tongue.

When the hushed conversation swung back around to Dumbledore's private lessons, Ron did try to lighten the mood with a comment about Harry knowing at least one class that he'd be taking that Fall. This triggered Harry's memory of another thing that the Headmaster had told him the night previous…that their OWL results would be arriving that day.

"Oh, that's nice," said Hermione, without much enthusiasm in her voice.

Her two friends stared at her as if she'd grown another head.

"What?" she said defensively. "Were you expecting me to fly off the handle at the news? To start shrieking, or rushing to the window to see if I could spot owls heading towards us, or run downstairs to badger Molly, and demand to know if our private test results were for some reason delivered to her instead of to us?"

Harry and Ron looked at each other, then turned their heads towards their bushy-haired friend at the same rate of speed and replied in tandem.

"Yes."

Hermione sighed. "Well that's disappointing. Have I been that bad?"

Ron rubbed the back of his neck.

"Well, Hermione…you have spent an awful lot of time staring towards the Eastern sky since you've been here, haven't you?"

"Define awful."

"Hermione, it's part of what makes you…you," Harry declared. "And we love you for it."

"Oh, stop," the Muggleborn witch insisted. "I'm mature enough to admit to my anxieties over the past month, but now? After you just told us that, Harry? Makes my petty anxieties rather…petty."

Ron arched an eyebrow. "Quick, somebody check her for an _Imperius_."

"Hey!" Hermione protested.

"Is for horses?" Harry teased.

"Hmmmft!"

"Too bad you can't maintain that mature attitude," said Ron.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.

"I mean that you have to freak out," the red-haired wizard replied. "It would be out of character for you not to, unless there was something even more important for you to worry about."

"But there is!"

"And I would just as soon keep that more important thing between us," Harry whispered loudly. "Ron's right. His Mum and Ginny are sure to notice if you don't act like they'd expect you to, and will want to know why."

Hermione frowned. "So you two are telling me that in order to keep your secret a secret, I have to wear my anxieties on my sleeve?"

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, that about sums it up."

"Any suggestions on how I accomplish that task?"

"Hmm…," thought Ron, rubbing his chin. "You could always fly off the handle at the news, start shrieking, and run downstairs to badger Mum and ask if she's received our test results?"

"Prat!"

Harry chuckled. "No worries, Hermione...we'll know that you're just putting on an act."

"And you better know that I'll be thinking about you the whole time!" Hermione hissed.

"Thanks. I will."

Hermione nodded, then took a quick step towards Harry and pulled him into a deep hug. Then she took two steps back from the boys, took a deep breath, and shouted more towards the door than towards them.

"Today? Our OWL results are coming today? And only now you think to tell us? Harry! OH NO! What if they've already arrived?

The Muggleborn witch then threw open the door and ran down the stairs, screaming the whole way.

"Mrs. Weasley…Harry says that they're coming today! TODAY! Have any owls arrived yet?"

Harry chuckled and shook his head.

"She's a good actress."

"Not much of a stretch, though, is it?" Ron said with a smile.

Harry snorted.

"Right, so…you probably ought to stay in character as well."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been all serious and thoughtful the last few minutes," said Harry. "Very out of character."

"Oy!"

"Don't try to deny it."

Ron rolled his eyes.

"So I imagine you've got some ideas on how I should act?"

Harry smiled, then stretched that smile into a glassy-eyed goofy grin.

"Oh, Fleur you're so…amazing!" he mock-mumbled.

"Sod off."

"Have you acted any differently since she arrived?"

Ron sighed.

"Okay, fine…I'll try."

"Can't be too much of a stretch for you."

"Shut it, Potter," Ron hissed. He took a step towards the door, then paused and turned back.

"Harry?"

"Yes, Ron?"

"You won't mind if I _don't _think about you the whole time I'm downstairs acting like a horny teenager…will you?"

"I'd just as soon that you didn't," Harry replied quickly.

"Good," said Ron. He paused, then added, "Not that there's anything wrong with…"

"Ron?"

"Yeah?"

"Go act like a horny love-struck buffoon."

"Right."

Harry let out a small sigh as he followed his friend down the stairs. He thought about all of the different ways that he could prove to Ron that he wasn't a homosexual, which brought him back full circle to the play acting that he himself might need to be doing downstairs.

So was there a way that he could secretly let Hermione know that he might be thinking about her at the same time that she was going to be play acting and thinking about him?

He smiled…and wondered if he dared suggest that they read their OWL results in the sitting room.


	3. Chapter 3 Panda Pants

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

**A/N: **I am trying to follow canon narrative a little more closely than normal in this story, so I was a little disappointed when I realized at the start of writing this chapter that my descriptions of the Burrow's floor plan in the first two chapters seriously contradicted canon. I'm in good company, at least, as canon also contradicts canon's floor plan descriptions…my eyes glazed over when I tried to read on-line essays that attempted to logic it out. But it's bugged me enough to rationalize the changes, and they are described here. Small changes have also been made to the first two chapters for consistency, but readers who are following this story as it is serially posted chapter-by-chapter won't need to go back and reread them just to catch up.

**Canon Question of the day: **In HBP, the black eye that Hermione got from the pranked telescope wasn't treated until the group visited Diagon Alley a few days after Harry's birthday. While we don't know exactly when Harry arrived at the Burrow, canon tells us that a lot of quidditch was played in "the next few weeks" in between getting OWLs and his birthday. So, Hermione was forced to look "like a panda" all that time. Why? Just so Draco could insult her about it at Madame Malkins? Does anyone think that Molly would allow that much time to pass if it was her precious little daughter whose eye was blackened?

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 3: Panda Pants**

The fourth owl that swooped into the Burrow's kitchen window that morning didn't garner nearly as much attention as the first three…not that she cared. Hedwig landed on her human's shoulder and nudged the side of his head with her own.

"Good morning to you too, girl," Harry replied quietly. "How was the hunting?"

"BARK!" Hedwig replied, with a response that was far more characteristic of snowy owls than the pedestrian "hoot" used by other owls.

"Ssshh!" Harry hissed, nodding back over his shoulder towards Ron, his mum, and the Burrow's active floo connection.

"bark."

"No worries," Harry whispered. "Too bad about the hunt…thought you might have more success out here in the country."

"bark…bark!"

Harry snorted. "Well at least you didn't go hungry. Leave any room for some bacon?"

Hedwig's silent glare was the perfect answer for a ridiculous question.

"Right," Harry said with a quiet chuckle. "So…I think that I managed to hide a rasher or two from Ron. There's a breakfast tray still on my bed…check under the plate."

"bark!"

"Oh, and if you're up for it girl?"

Hedwig glared at her human, and nibbled on his ear.

"Fine…just trying to be polite!" Harry whispered, as his familiar launched off his shoulder and flew out the opened kitchen window.

Hermione stared at her best friend and shook her head in disbelief. She thought that her familiar bond with Crookshanks was strong, but the way Harry and Hedwig communicated was amazing.

"What did you just ask her to do?" she whispered across the table.

Harry smiled. "She'll take your letter after you've written it."

"What letter?"

"The letter that you are going to send to your parents letting them know about your test scores."

"Oh, yeah…I guess," Hermione said. "Doesn't have to be right now though. I mean...if you want to…"

Harry scrunched his nose and shook his head.

"Plenty of time for worries and plans," he whispered. "Besides, if you take after your mum and dad, they might be just as anxious and nervous as you were."

"Stop!" Hermione gently chided. "So what's up with Hedwig?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said that she didn't have much success hunting…but she didn't go hungry?"

Harry snorted. "Three mice and a small hare…no, she ate well last night."

"But what was she hunting for, then?"

The teenage wizard grinned. "The right guy to nest with."

It was Hermione's turn to snort.

"Really?" Harry asked slyly. "So how is your hunt going, then?"

"What?" Hermione hissed.

"Your reaction…you were thinking something like _'Aren't we all'_, right?"

Hermione's eyebrows arched towards her hairline. The fact that he understood her non-verbals as well as his familiar's was…disconcerting.

Harry's smile grew wider as he nodded towards the stairs.

"Go…grab some parchment and… if you don't mind, lend me a pen and paper as well?"

Hermione tilted her head.

"Headmaster didn't want Hedwig delivering letters from my Aunt and Uncle's," Harry explained. "I haven't sent Susan Bones my condolences yet."

The Muggleborn's eyes darted towards the stack of _Daily Prophets_ that they had been sharing.

"Sure thing, Harry" she replied sadly, imagining his name written out in a ledger next to a column labeled "_The Right Guy_."

Hermione placed a check mark next to her caring, thoughtful friend's _"Right Guy"_ tally as she rose from the table and headed towards the stairs.

"Where she going?" Ron asked.

The-Boy-Who-Lived swung his legs around the bench so that he could face the red-haired teen. For the last hour Molly had forced Ron to stand by the kitchen fireplace as she made one floo call after another, bragging to friends and acquaintances bout his OWL results. Every once in a while she would blindly reach out and literally drag him into the conversation.

"She's going to write to her parents," Harry replied, carefully keeping his gaze centered on Ron's face.

The last thing he wanted to do was let his attention drift towards Mrs. Weasley while she floo called from her hands and knees. It wasn't the first time that he'd seen Molly in this position, but it was the first time he had seen her bum in the air since she encouraged her husband to _ride her like a hippogriff_.

"Oh, right," Ron acknowledged.

Molly pulled her son's head into the flames before he had the chance to expand on these comments.

Harry chuckled to himself as he swung back towards the table. The pile of newspapers caught his eye again, and he sighed. The sheer number of Death Eater attacks and related disappearances over the previous two weeks was overwhelming. And while he was happy to see that Fudge had finally been sacked as Minister, that event was overshadowed by Amelia Bones' death. Harry had thought her to be the ideal replacement to Fudge, based both on his conversations with her niece, and how she had treated him during his trial.

The-Boy-Who-Lived began mentally composing the first few lines of his condolence letter while he waited for Hermione's return. He hoped that he wouldn't need to reuse these lines in other letters sent to grieving friends, but was realistic enough to fear that the sympathies might become boilerplate language.

**oo00OO00oo**

"Just a few more calls," Molly assured them, glancing over her shoulder towards Harry and Hermione.

He tried not to think about the view as he looked past Mrs. Weasley's bum and nodded.

"No worries," Hermione declared from the other side of the table.

Molly thanked them for their patience and grabbed one more pinch of floo powder. Before calling out her next address she glanced down at the clock that she had set on the floor. The clock face stared back unchanged…nine hands, all hovering over "Mortal Peril." She sighed, and literally dove into her next conversation.

"She said that an hour and a half ago," Ron whined to his friends.

"Well, it could have been worse, you know," Hermione stated.

"How?" demanded Ron.

"You might have spent less time sleeping in History of Magic, and allowed your mum to brag about eight OWLs instead of seven!"

"Yeah, yeah…don't hold your breath waiting for me to apologize for coming up short on that one," Ron said.

Hermione let out a short breath of exasperation and glanced towards Harry.

"No apologies here, either," he declared with an almost satisfied grin on his face.

"Bah! At least you had a good excuse, Harry," she muttered.

The Muggleborn caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

"What's up?" she asked Ron.

"I'm starving!" hissed the red-haired teen, as he gravitated towards the ice box.

"Ronald! Come back here!" Molly barked. "Emily Codswallower is waiting to congratulate you!"

The teenager froze, sighed, then retraced his steps.

"Yes, Mum. Coming, Mum."

Molly accepted her son's compliance with a curt nod, then turned towards Harry.

"Why don't you ask Ginny to make you something for lunch?" she asked, just before she dove back into the flames with her son in tow.

Harry turned towards Hermione, who was a little miffed at Molly's focus.

"You think that Ginny will make me some lunch too?" she asked.

"Don't think that Ginny will be anywhere other than her room, so long as she has that black eye," Harry said.

"Do you blame her? I know that I wouldn't want to be seen looking like a panda."

Harry chuckled, "Oh, I don't know, Hermione. You were a cute little kitty cat…bet you'd be just as cuddly as a panda."

The Muggleborn stared at her friend, trying to decide whether to be angry or pleased by this comment. She decided to avoid deciding, and stood back from the table.

"Come on, we need a break."

"Fancy an escape to the sitting room?" Harry teased.

"Hush!" Hermione hissed, pushing on his arm until he nearly lost his balance. She then pulled him back away from the table, and dragged him into the small scullery on the far side of the kitchen.

"Might as well earn our keep," said Hermione, using her full voice now that they were in the pantry and well away from the floo. "Mrs. Weasley will be upset once she realizes that the washing hasn't been done for the day."

Harry shrugged his agreement as he ducked under hanging bunches of dried herbs and walked past shelves of tinned fruits and vegetables. He'd seen Molly's daily routine enough times to know what needed to be done.

"Unless you'd rather talk about….?" Hermione asked.

Her best friend shook his head as he reached for the large two-handled wicker basket that sat empty on top of Molly's charmed washing machine.

"Like I said before…time enough to talk when Ron's with us," he reasoned. "And it would do me good to keep my hands busy…on chores, that is."

Hermione snorted. "Thinking of another way to keep your hands busy, Mister?"

"Maybe," Harry grinned. "Only saying that there are times – _cough_-sitting room-_cough_ - when we just can't help where our hands go."

"You are a real prat sometimes," Hermione chided.

"Ah, but that's why you love me…right?" Harry teased.

Hermione shook her head slightly and sighed.

"I suppose…heaven help me," she admitted. "Now let's get going, before Ron or Molly realizes that the two of us are tucked away in the closest thing the Burrow has to a broom closet."

"You make that sound like that's a bad thing."

"Out!" Hermione growled, pushing Harry back towards the kitchen with both hands.

The smile on her face made it clear that she wasn't really upset. The smile on Harry's face made it clear that he was enjoying the banter, which Hermione thought was a really good thing, considering circumstances.

Harry and Hermione's exit from the pantry was met by a calculating gaze…Ron's face had cleared the flames again, and he had been searching for his two friends. Harry held up the large wicker basket, causing the red-haired wizard's shoulders to relax.

"Oh, right…good," Ron decided. "Mum can start straight away on lunch, then."

"You're so predictable," Hermione sighed.

Her red-haired friend smiled. "That's why you love me, right?"

"No."

Ron paused. "So there's other reasons, then?" he asked half-hopeful, as his friends walked past him towards the stairwell.

Hermione was polite enough to wait until she was halfway up the stairs before softly muttering, "None that come to mind."

Harry stopped and looked back over his shoulder at his best friend.

"We'll start at the top floor and make our way down," she stated plainly. "That's the most efficient way."

"Erm…right," Harry agreed, deciding not to offer up the teasing that sat on the tip of his tongue.

**oo00OO00oo**

It took far less effort to climb to the head of the Burrow's stairs now that someone had shaved a few layers off of the top. Hermione used the gathering of dirty laundry to give Harry a tour of the remodeled home.

The insides of the Burrow used to be just as strange and quirky as it looked from the outsides…a six-bedroom home with the bedrooms spread out over five different floors. Some levels had one bedroom, others had two. There didn't appear to be any bedrooms on the third level (Harry still didn't know what it was used for, even after all the time he'd spent at the Burrow). Nobody ever complained about the layout, or thought it strange or unnatural…like many things in the Wizarding World, the Burrow thumbed its architectural nose at logic and efficient design.

But Molly's acceptance of her home as "just the way it is" faltered after Voldemort's return at the end of Harry's Fourth Year. The Burrow's only Floo connection was in the kitchen, at ground level…too far away from a fifth floor bedroom if there was a Death Eater attack that necessitated a quick escape. Molly wanted her children to be as close to her as the family clock that she clutched continuously to her bosom… and that meant bedrooms much closer to the Master Bedroom.

It had taken the better part of a year to design, finance and complete the remodeling job. The work has started the summer previous…just after the Weasley family had moved into Grimmauld Place. The coincidence was striking for Harry. Not that he begrudged their long-term guest residence…that had been Sirius's decision, not his, and Hermione had been quick to point out safety advantages that went beyond Molly's occasionally irrational fears. For example, wards and security charms were much more effective and much less expensive to apply to a structure whose footprint was more symmetrical than eccentric.

Harry and Hermione started their self-assigned chore on the second floor (which would have been called the third floor by her cousins over in the States).

"This is the Master," Hermione noted, as they walked into Arthur and Molly's bedroom.

Harry had a look around the room. There were separate twin beds, but it was the same way in his Aunt and Uncle's bedroom, so it didn't strike him as odd, or particularly Victorian. Then he glanced up at the ceiling.

"Nice and quiet," he noted. "Do they still have an attic?"

Hermione chuckled. "Yes, they do…but no, they don't have a ghoul anymore."

"Probably didn't have much of a chance once he was clanking over Molly's bed, instead of Ron's."

"No, I don't imagine that he did," Hermione agreed, as she emptied the bedroom's clothes hamper into the basket. She glanced towards the bed and thought for a moment.

"Sheets were changed yesterday, so we don't need to strip the beds."

"Just as well," Harry grinned. "Wouldn't fancy having to handle Ron's linens after this morning."

Hermione crinkled her nose.

"Moving on, then…" she segued. "There's a new bath over this way, and Ginny's room is now on the other side."

Harry followed her into a small, but serviceable full bath, complete with a claw-footed tub. Hermione added a set of dirty towels to Harry's basket, then knocked on a closed door that was opposite to the one they'd used to gain entry.

"Ginny?" she called out.

"Go away!" a voice cried.

"Ginny, I'm just doing laundry."

"Don't care!"

"Ginny…you know how your mum gets when the dirty clothes don't…."

"Fine…Hold on, Phlegm's got a ton!"

"Ginny?" Hermione admonished.

There wasn't a response to this reproach…after a few moments silence the door swung open. The youngest Weasley appeared carrying a still-painful shiner and an armful of clothes. She took two steps into the bath, and was half-way through spitting "There…happy now?" when she spotted Harry standing behind Hermione with the basket.

"Eep!" the red-haired witch shrieked. She dropped the clothes, spun around, and darted back into her room.

"You didn't tell me that Harry was with you!" Ginny shrieked from behind the slammed door.

Hermione sighed as she squatted down to pick up what Ginny had dropped.

"What's wrong, Gin?" Harry called out. "I was there when it happened…not like I haven't seen something like…that…before?"

The way that the end of this sentence lost volume and faltered caused Hermione to look up at Harry. He was looking down…not at her face, but at the pair of black silk knickers that she'd just picked up off of the floor.

She smiled, and put one of her well-practiced sentences to good use.

"Oh, honestly, Harry…it's just a bit of dirty laundry. Don't tell me you've never seen a pair of knickers before?"

Harry gulped, thinking that "dirty" could easily describe the whiff of sheer silk in more ways than one. And in a flash he remembered that he _had_ seen something exactly like those knickers...the night before, when Fleur was still wearing them. And he found himself wondering why they looked sexier, and more arousing, now that Hermione had them in her hand.

He panicked, not wanting to give her the chance to talk about how natural it would be if he got a stiffie. So he lowered the laundry basket so that it covered the front of his trousers, and reached for the brain-bleach.

"Never seen a pair like that when I've done laundry at my Aunt and Uncle's," he snarked.

Hermione's eyes went wide.

"Would you have wanted to?"

"Not really."

Hermione shivered her shoulders. "Gee thanks, Harry," she snapped, tossing Fleur's undies into the basket. "That image just made me throw up a little bit in my mouth."

"I learned to get over that reaction."

"Oh, Harry…I'm so sorry."

He shrugged. "All part of the package tour when you're a house elf on Privet Drive."

Having gathered up all of the rest of Ginny and Fleur's clothes off the floor (and it was easy for Harry to tell what belonged to whom), Hermione dumped them into the basket, then offered him a consoling one-armed side-by-side hug.

"Done with this floor, then?" he asked.

She nodded, then led him back into the Master Bedroom.

And the witch who had been eavesdropping with one ear pressed against the door frowned…not knowing whether she should be discouraged or relieved that Harry had made no mention of her plain-Jane unmentionables.

When Harry and Hermione reached the first floor they found themselves on more familiar territory. Percy's room on one end, the Twins' on the other, and a bath and Ron's room in between.

With Harry walking behind her, Hermione allowed a small smile to form on her lips as she walked into her bedroom. She hadn't planned on doing the laundry with Harry that day…if she had, then her skimpiest, sexiest, undies would have been waiting for retrieval. The navy blue polyester knickers and bra set was a pretty good alternative, though…and certainly better than the pairs of "mollypants" that she only wore on certain days of the month.

The Muggleborn had second thoughts about her dirty laundry when she suddenly remembered just how she had dirtied some of it. Hermione had broken into a heavy sweat during her morning spell workout…sweat that had left her knickers wet in all the wrong places (so long as she didn't want Harry to mistakenly believe that she'd soaked them during a heavy rub).

Did she dare allow him to jump to those conclusions? She waffled.

"Hope that my hamper isn't too disgusting," Hermione said, as she pulled her nightgown out of the bin. "I sweated like a pig when I did my workout this morning."

"No worries," Harry replied brightly, as he secretly tried to logic out the pattern of sweat stains on the nightgown. "You worked up that sweat casting spells then?"

Hermione decided to explore the outer limits of her plan as she casually tossed her damp knickers onto the top of the growing pile in Harry's basket.

"Are you thinking of some other way that I could have gotten these knickers this wet?"

Eyes widened when Harry risked a quick look down at the pile. He pulled the basket tight against his body to double check that it was concealing the right parts, then let out a deep breath.

Trying hard not to act his age, Harry tried to play it cool.

"Hmmm…I guess you could have gone for a swim?"

Hermione grinned. "Yes, that is one alternative," she replied. Then she reached for her brassiere and added it to the pile. "But how would you then explain the fact that my bra isn't wet?"

Harry arched an eyebrow. "You went topless?" he cheekily guessed.

His friend shrugged nonchalantly. "Wouldn't have been the first time…except this is the Burrow, not France."

A breath caught in Harry's throat. It was getting very hard to act more like a friend than a teenage boy.

"Now that is a vacation story that you've never shared with me before."

"Oh…would you like to hear it, then?" Hermione asked coyly, as she reached for the rest of her clothing.

"Might be a good distraction while we empty out Ron's hamper," Harry joked.

Hermione laughed.

"You got me there," she admitted. "Although, there is always a chance we'll be able to take the good with the bad."

"What chance is that?" Harry asked with disbelief.

Hermione smiled. "I want to see if Bill has gotten brave enough to wear the silk shorts that Fleur has had him wearing now that he's back at the Burrow."

Harry thought for a moment, then let out a low-pitched whistle.

"That would be rather ballsy with his mum doing the laundry," he stated.

"Language, Harry!" Hermione chided. "The correct term is testicles."

"Erm….Right. Sorry."

Hermione nodded, then led Harry out of the room. Her face betrayed a hint of self-satisfaction. His face betrayed more than a hint of confusion.

They made short work of collecting first the bathroom towels, then the contents of Ron's hamper. It turned out that Bill was still working his nerve, and the less said about his younger brother's dirty clothing, the better. Harry actually spent far more time examining Ron's room than his undies…marveling at how it was exactly the same as when it'd been on the top floor of the Burrow. Hermione picked up on this interest, and told him that from what she read, magical remodeling actually allowed for the cut and paste of entire rooms as if the house was a stack of building blocks.

Harry didn't think to worry about his own clothes hamper until Hermione took a look into it and chuckled.

"Harry…did you go regimental yesterday?" she asked conversationally, as she dumped the hamper into the basket in one go.

"No!" he hissed.

"Then where are _your_…?"

"Disappointed?" Harry teased.

"Well, it's only fair. You got to see mine," she mock-pouted.

"You'll have to peek under my robes, then," Harry replied.

"You're still wearing the same pair?"

Harry shrugged. "I only have one half-way decent pair…everything else is my cousin's hand-me-downs, and…well…there are some stains that don't come out no matter what you do…."

"Ugh…thank you for sharing that image with me."

"You're welcome."

Hermione shook her head.

"So when do you change your shorts, then?"

"I don't…just use cleaning charms every morning."

"Cleaning charms?" Hermione asked, her voice rising in pitch. "How could you…they're so…how do you handle the chafing?"

The teenage wizard shrugged. "Guess it wasn't an issue for me after a while."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said sadly. "Your poor skin…it must be so rough and dry!"

Harry grinned. "Are you volunteering to rub some lotion on me?"

Hermione's first thought was to call Harry a berk/git/prat. Her second thought was that Harry was being amazingly relaxed…almost cheeky. Just what she had hoped to accomplish!

Deciding it a shame to waste the opportunity, Hermione purred like a kitten, and said, "I've got a bottle of moisturizer in my trunk."

"You'd…you'd really…"

"What's the matter, Harry?" his friend asked. "It would only be for medicinal purposes…right?"

"Erm…right."

"Of course," Hermione continued, "We'd have to consider a permanent cure for the problem."

"We would?" Harry asked. "Got something in mind?"

Hermione smiled. "Yes, actually…I saw some green silk boxers in one of the mail-order catalogs that Fleur lent me."

Harry snorted. "Boxer shorts in a mail-order catalog? So is that where she shops for Bill, then?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Hermione replied matter-of-factly.

"So…why were you borrowing it?"

The bushy-haired witch's eyes flashed with mirth. "Well somebody has a birthday coming up…doesn't he?"

Harry snorted. "Yeah…I bet green would look good on Neville."

Hermione gave him a gentle nudge that set him a bit off-balance.

"Prat!"

"I'd say you love me anyway, but we've already established that point…haven't we?"

Hermione sighed. Harry pressed his advantage.

"So you think boxers over briefs, huh?"

"Yes."

"Is that a personal preference, or….?"

"Harry, if you don't want my help, then…"

"No, no…I do!" Harry replied.

"Good."

"Just so long as you let me return the favor," Harry joked.

Hermione chuckled, then pressed her advantage.

"Sounds good to me."

"Really?"

"Sure…it's just good friends helping good friends, right?"

"Absolutely."

"We'll just have to find a private time to look through the catalogs together," Hermione decided.

"There's more than one?"

"Of course, Harry," Hermione chided. "One to shop for Bill and you, the other for Fleur and me."

"So Fleur has a birthday coming up as well?"

"Harry!"

"Okay, fine. So…what's this about private time, then? We're doing this as friends, right?"

"Of course, Harry," his friend said with a smile. "But that doesn't mean that Molly…or Ron…wouldn't blow their top if they spotted us having a look through."

"Really?" Harry asked. "So just how racy are these mail-order catalogs, then?"

Hermione paused, thinking how best to answer. She pointed to the basket in Harry's hands, and smiled.

"Fleur says she orders most of her lingerie from them."

Harry immediately thought about the outfit that Fleur had flashed the night before…the outfit now sitting in his basket. And then he imagined Hermione wearing an outfit like that. And then he pressed the clothes basket even closer against his crotch.

"Private time it is, then," he stammered.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry was very happy to see Molly back on her two feet when Hermione and he made their way back to the kitchen. Ron obviously shared that attitude as he sat at the table and watched his mum pull food from the ice box.

"Oh, there you two are," said Molly. "I'll take that basket, Harry…you don't need to be doing the wash."

"That's alright, Mrs. Weasley," Harry replied. "It won't take but a minute for us to load the washer," Harry replied.

"No, you're a guest, Harry…I insist."

"Mum…but what about lunch?" Ron whined.

Molly sighed.

"Well, where is Ginny, anyway? She should have been doing one or the other."

"Dunno," said Ron. "I was with you all morning, remember?"

"We saw her up in her bedroom, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione.

Molly scowled. "Why would she be there at this time of the day?"

"She still has that black eye," Harry noted.

"What? I can't believe that," Molly snapped. "Used the strongest bruise removing spell in the book…it should have cleared up by now." Then she walked over to the base of the stairs and shrieked, "Ginny? Come down here!"

It took two rounds of shouting to coax the teen-aged witch out of her room and down to the kitchen. Her black-eye didn't look any better.

Molly huffed, and slammed the kitchen knife that she'd been using to prepare lunch down on the counter.

"Well, we'll have to get Fred and George to come here and straighten this out right away," she declared.

"Can't it wait until after lunch?" Ron whined.

"No! Now!" Ginny shouted.

Ron scowled. "Don't see why it couldn't just wait until we see them when we go to Diagon Alley for our school shopping," he muttered.

Molly stopped in her tracks, swiveled, and cuffed Ron on the head.

"Ouch!" he shouted. "What was that for?"

"For being so selfish and insensitive," Molly declared. "Why the very idea! Forcing your poor sister to live with that black eye…it could be weeks before the supply lists come out!"

"It was just a suggestion," Ron said defensively.

"And a horrid one at that!" Molly yelled. "What kind of mean-spirited person would even think of allowing such a thing to occur?"

Ron hung his head, and went with the rote reply of, "Yes, Mum. Sorry, Mum."

Deciding that the point had been made well enough, Molly nodded and reached for a pinch of floo powder.

Harry dropped his gaze to the pile of laundry in his hands as she got down on hands and knees and shouted, "Wheezes!" He kept his eyes diverted while she stuck her head into the green flames, and only looked up once it was clear that she was once again back on her feet.

"Why the nerve of those two!" Molly said in a very loud voice. "Charming some cardboard cutout of themselves to say that they can't come to the floo right now, and to give them my name and floo address…I'll give them something, alright!"

Ron caught his breath as he watched his mum open up her "special" cabinet and reach for the stack of "special" red envelopes.

"Oh, boy…they're in for it now!" he muttered.

Harry felt Hermione nudge his shoulder and turned towards her.

"Why don't we do that laundry now?" she asked softly."Sounds good to me," Harry replied.

He carried the basket into the pantry as she held open the door. She closed the door behind her.

"No need to hear that howler being made at full volume," she stated.

"Agreed," said Harry.

"I've never understood why the howler's magic can't simply amplify the voice of the sender," Hermione said.

"Where's the fun in that?" Harry snarked. "Wouldn't give Molly a chance to express her concerns in full voice."

"Good point," Hermione agreed, as she began to toss dirty clothes into the basin of Molly's charmed washing machine.

The device was a curious blend of magic and Victorian-era Muggle technology. The washer basin sat upright on four short legs, and was roughly the size of a 55-gallon barrel. Two rollers sat one on top of the other on one side of the basin; they were there to press the water out of the cleaned clothes after they were washed. Soon after Hermione dropped the first bit of dirty laundry into the basin, the cleaning water magically appeared and began to slowly fill the washer. The water level rose to just a few inches from the rim, reaching that point just as Hermione dropped in Molly's bloomers, which had been sitting at the bottom of the basket.

The wizard who was holding the laundry basket was (thankfully) thinking too much about the knickers that preceded Molly's bloomers to notice.

"Harry?"

He looked up.

"Yes, Hermione?"

"The basket is empty."

"Erm, right," he said sheepishly, as he placed the basket down on the floor (where it would catch the clothes after they'd been squeezed through the rollers).

When Harry straightened his back and turned towards his best friend he noticed a wry smile on her face.

"What?" he asked.

"Your's too, Harry," she said impishly.

"What?"

"Your shorts, Harry…toss them into the basin."

"But I'm still wearing them?"

"So you've told me," Hermione replied brightly. Then she turned her back to him and added, "There, I promise not to peek."

"But then I'll…what about while they are still in the wash?"

Hermione giggled. "I thought all wizards liked the chance to air out their privates?"

"But…you'll know that I'm…"

"Yes, Harry, I'll know you're going regimental," Hermione said plainly. "Not that I could see the proof of that, given the length of your robes."

"But…you'll know!" Harry hissed.

Hermione sighed. "Harry, it's not healthy to wear your shorts day after day, using only cleaning charms."

"But…"

"So how do you clean them when you are at your Aunt and Uncle's?" Hermione asked. "Don't you worry about getting underage magic use warnings?"

"I don't."

"You don't worry?"

"No, I do worry…which is why I don't. Use magic that is," Harry explained. "I sneak them in when I'm doing their laundry."

"Ah…and do you resort to wearing your cousin's then?"

"No, I don't."

"Don't wear your cousin's shorts, or don't wear any shorts, Harry?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"So what's the difference between going without underwear there and airing your privates out here?"

"Trousers."

"Ah, I see," Hermione replied. She smiled sympathetically and intentionally ignored the simple solution (that Harry just pull on a pair of trousers from his trunk).

"Would it make you more comfortable if I tossed mine in as well?"

"You already did."

"I meant the ones that I'm wearing right now."

"Oh...you'd do that?"

Hermione shrugged. "If that's what it takes…good friends helping good friends, going through things together…right?"

Harry thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"I would actually be a lot _more_ uncomfortable if you went regimental with me."

"Why?" Hermione asked. "My robes aren't any shorter than yours?"

"Because I'd know that you weren't wearing knickers!" Harry said with exasperation. "And without my shorts, there'd be nothing to hold back my…reaction….to the fact that I'd know."

Hermione's eyes sparkled. She was delighted by this admission…delighted both in its contents, and in the fact that Harry actually voiced them to her.

"Well, I wouldn't want you to feel uncomfortable about displaying your…reaction," she said brightly. Hermione then turned her back and said, "So it's a solo mission, then."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Because you'd know."

"Yes, Harry, I've already agreed on that point. But why would that matter?"

"Because…because it would," he admitted.

Hermione nodded, and placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. In the ebb and flow of her game plan, it was time to ebb.

"Fair enough," she said, dropping a cup of charmed detergent into the basin and closing the lid. "So long as you promise to change your shorts each day after we order from that catalog?"

Harry eyed her skeptically as the basin's legs came to life and agitated the mixture of wet dirty clothes and detergent by running in circles first one way, then the other..

"I get final say on what we order, right?" he asked.

Hermione giggled. "Sure, Harry…I can always order the man-thong birthday present separately."

He winced. "You are joking, right?"

"Maybe..."

Harry shook his head. "Don't know how anyone could be comfortable having a string stuck up in between their cheeks."

Hermione shrugged and playfully repeated something that he had said earlier. "Guess it wasn't an issue for me after a while."

A large breath caught in Harry's throat. Hermione smiled sweetly, and opened the door before he could voice a response.

The-Boy-Who-Lived waited a few seconds before following Hermione out into the kitchen. This allowed him to adjust the way that his shorts constrained his reaction to Hermione's implied admission. Not that anyone would have noticed, given all of the focus placed on the Weasley twin who had lost the coin flip and responded to his mother's howler.

"I can't believe you would be so careless, Fred!" Molly shouted. "Merlin knows what else you've left upstairs…if you don't march up there right now and clean your room, then I'll clean it for you!"

"Mum…what about my eye?" Ginny whined.

"Oh, yes," Molly said. "Fred? First fix your sister's eye, and then clean your room."

"Yes, Mum," her son muttered. He pulled a tub of ointment out of his pocket and offered it to Ginny.

"Here…dab some of this on, and the bruise should be gone within the hour."

Molly reached over and snatched the salve out of her son's hand. She unscrewed the top, and gave the thick yellow paste a wary look.

"Where did you get this?" she demanded.

"George and I made it," Fred replied. "With all of the product testing we've been doing, needed a decent bruise remover."

Ginny snorted loudly. "If you think that I'm going to be one of your guinea pigs…"

"No, we've done all the testing on it…it's perfectly safe!" her brother protested.

The red-haired witch frowned as she took the tub from her mother, held it under her nose, and gave it a good sniff. After a few quiet moments of thought, she set the tub down onto the kitchen table.

Then, without any kind of warning, she spun on her heel and violently punched the fleshy part of Fred's arm with a clenched fist.

"Owww!" he howled, turning away from Ginny and protectively covering his arm. "What did you do that for?"

"So that you can prove this stuff is safe," she said sweetly. "Now give us a look…might need another whack to get the right color."

"You're barmy!" Fred shouted. He then turned to the Weasley matriarch and whined, "Mum?"

Molly dismissed her son's protests with a wave of her hand.

"I don't want to hear it," she replied, walking up to Fred and pushing up the sleeve of his robe. "That can't have hurt any worse than getting punched in the eye, and if you hadn't left your dangerous pranks lying about, then…"

Molly shifted her focus from completing her sentences to the fist-sized bruise that was forming on Fred's arm.

"Well," she said, "the bruise isn't quite as purple as her black eye, but I think it will do."

"Are you sure?" Ginny asked, pulling her fist back and measuring out a second blow.

"Yes!" Fred protested, moving to place his mum in between him and his sister.

Hermione shook her head and sighed. "Ginny, you're more worried about nasty side effects than whether it will work, right?"

"No! There's no way that I'm going to walk around looking like this…"

Harry nodded. "I don't blame you, Ginny, but Hermione's right."

"Oh, you would think so, wouldn't you?" the younger witch whined.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Harry.

"Enough," Molly snapped. Using her free hand, she grabbed the tub of salve and held it in front of her son. "Well, get on with it, then," she ordered.

The red-haired wizard looked first at his mother, then at his angry sister's fist. He let out a deep breath as he dipped his fingers into the tub.

"Why you couldn't just trust me when I said that it was safe?" he muttered.

"Years of experience?" Ron volunteered.

Fred noticed that Hermione and Harry were both nodding their heads in agreement. He shrugged as he spread a dollop of ointment onto his bruised arm.

"It's a fair cop," he admitted.

The swelling and discoloration in Fred's arm began to lessen almost as soon as the ointment was absorbed into the skin. Ginny wasn't convinced by either the apparent efficacy of the product, or the apparent lack of immediate side effects, and insisted that they wait out a full hour before she treated her black eye. Fred complained, saying that there were a million different things to do back in their shop, but Molly agreed, noting that an hour should be more than enough time for him to clean his room.

Ginny retreated to her bedroom to wait out the hour, while Molly tried to get back into her daily routine after all of the day's excitement. This left Harry, Ron and Hermione to follow Fred up to his old bedroom.

"So how are you doing, Harry?" the older teen asked.

"Can't complain."

Hermione gave Harry an incredulous look, to which he shrugged in reply.

"What?" he asked. "I could have all of…that…over my head and still be stuck at my Aunt and Uncles."

"True enough," Ron agreed. "So what's all this stuff you left behind?" he then asked his brother.

Fred shrugged. "Prototypes, mostly. Here, catch."

Ron did the sensible thing and ducked out of the path of the cloth pouch that his brother had tossed his way.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake…it's just an expandable bag," Fred whined.

"Sure about that?" asked Ron.

Fred rolled his eyes as he picked the pouch up off of the floor.

"Geez…had it in my pocket…then pulled it out of my pocket," he muttered. Fred held the bag open under Ron's nose and asked, "Satisfied? Or do you want to crawl in and take a look for yourself?"

Ron snorted and shook his head as he grabbed hold of the open bag. "No, thanks."

"Is that like a magical tent, then?" Harry asked. "More room on the inside than there should be?"

Fred nodded as he grabbed one of the half-empty crates and dragged it in front of his brother.

"Century bag," he noted. "Holds up to one-hundred gallons of stuff, but never gets heavier than a few pounds."

"Dead useful," observed Harry. "Hey Hermione…how many books are there in a gallon?"

The Muggleborn witch sighed. "Well it would obviously depend on how big each book was."

"I suppose," Harry reasoned. "Still…has to be an improvement over the book bag that you haul from class to class."

Hermione snorted. "As if I'd trust any of my books not to go missing in one of those."

Fred chuckled. "And the love and trust just keeps on flowing around here, doesn't it?" He reached into the crate and retrieved a sheet-covered rectangular object.

"Oh...look! Forgot all about this experiment."

"What's that?" Ron asked.

Fred pulled the sheet away, and allowed the charmed mirror that had been underneath to answer for itself.

"What do I look like, you moron?"

Ron scowled. "A charmed mirror?"

"No…you think?" the mirror snarked. "Tell me…when they were passing out brains was your place in line behind the orangutans?"

"Be nice!" Fred chided.

"Says the ingrate who threw a sheet over my head and binned me…and how long ago was that? Can't be that long, since you haven't gotten that much uglier…"

"Right…buh bye, then," said Fred, as he covered the mirror back up.

"And it wonders why we left him here," he sighed.

"So what was that?" Harry asked. "Did you two change the mirror charms to make it insult people?"

"What?" Fred asked. "Oh…no. It was like that when we bought it."

"Why would you want a mirror that insulted you whenever you looked at it?" Hermione asked.

"Because it was cheap, and all we could afford at the time," Fred replied.

"What were you trying to do, then?" asked Harry.

"Modify our canary creams, so that they turn you into a mirror instead of a bird."

"Huh? What for?"

Fred looked at his brother and sighed. "Maybe not behind the orangutans, but not that far ahead…"

"Hey!" Ron protested.

"It's a prank idea," Fred explained, setting the shrouded mirror on the floor. "Let's say that you ate one of these creams, and turned into a wall mirror. Then you get Harry, here, to swap you out for one of the mirrors in a girls' lavatory?"

"Uh…then what?"

"Then you would get to make the snarky comments, Ron…instead of the mirror," Harry concluded.

"That's a terrible idea!" Hermione chided. "What if somebody replaced one of the changing room mirrors at Madame Malkin's? Or swapped out a mirror that faced one of the girls' dormitory showers?"

Fred offered up some mock indignation. "Hermione! We would never think of something that perverted and devious!"

"Right," she replied sarcastically.

A smile formed on Ron's face. "Oh…now I get it. Brilliant idea, Fred."

Hermione snorted, and shook her head. "You're such a…so Ron, what if Fred had stuffed one of these mirror candies down your throat, then snuck you into Umbridge's bathroom? Or what if your mum ate one, and replaced the mirror in _your_ bedroom. Fancy the thought of what she might watch you do there?"

Ron's face grew pale. "Erm, yeah…not so brilliant, then."

Fred chuckled as he pulled his wand and vanished the mirror, rather than drop it into the expanding pouch. "Well, not to worry…we never were able to get the transfiguration part right."

"You were using transfiguration spells?" Hermione asked. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then shook her head. "I would have thought that illusion-based magic would be more appropriate."

"Huh…never thought of it from that angle," Fred replied. "Wonder if it would work that way?"

Hermione caught her breath, chagrined that she might have inadvertently helped the Twins with this kind of nasty prank. Her concerns were magnified when Harry offered his opinion.

"I'm pretty sure that it can, Fred…if it's anything like the spell I saw last night that made somebody look like an armchair."

"Really?" asked Fred. "And who was this somebody?"

"Horace Slughorn," said Harry. "He's going to be teaching potions this year."

The red-haired twin smiled as he pulled a small notebook and Muggle pen from a pocket and wrote himself a note.

"An armchair, you said? Thanks for the tip, Harry!"

"Fred!" Hermione scolded. "You are not going to invent that sort of thing!"

The prankster smiled. "Okay, Hermione…no mirrors. I reckon that a toilet is more like an armchair anyway."

"A…a toilet?" the Muggleborn witch hissed. "That's even worse!"

"Erm…Fred?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"Why would anyone want to disguise themselves as a real toilet? I mean…I get the perv potential, but what if somebody sits down on you and…you know…?"

"What and why indeed?" Fred replied with a grin. "I was thinking of the prank potential…casting it on your enemies instead of your friends. Couple it with a _Petrificus Totalis_ spell so that the victim is forced to just sit there, and…"

"I don't know what would be worse," Hermione muttered. "Getting…used…or being the user."

"No need for the user to know," Fred countered. "Unless…maybe we could build in a triggered _Finite _that cancelled the spell a few seconds after somebody dropped their drawers and took a seat...that'd be a rude surprise, wouldn't it?"

Hermione let out a huge sigh. "If only you two used your powers for good, rather than evil…"

"Now, now," Fred gently chided, pointing towards the pouch in Ron's hand. "I'll have you know that the Ministry just ordered a hundred of these bags from us."

"Really?" asked Harry. "What are they planning on using them for?"

"Something about cleaning up attacks on Muggles," Fred explained. "They can quickly sanitize a site without destroying magical evidence by dumping all of it into one of these bags."

"They should be spending more time trying to prevent Death Eater attacks, rather than worry about more effective clean-ups," Hermione spat.

"No argument here," Fred replied.

Ron's brother began transferring rubber chickens from crate to bag. Hermione immediately noticed the difference between these rubber chickens and the ones used in the Twins' prank wands…the heads were more streamlined and bulbous, and their necks both longer and thicker.

Fred spotted this interest, and waggled his eyebrows as tossed one towards Hermione and crowed,**_"Cock-a-diddle-do!"_**

"Isn't it supposed to be doodle-do?" asked Ron.

"Not for these chickens," Fred grinned. He winked at Hermione and mock-whispered, "The activation phrase is '_Vibrato_'."

She glanced at the rubber toy she was holding by the neck and blushed.

Harry grinned. "Are you choking the chicken, Hermione?"

"Certainly not!" she replied hastily. Fred and Harry shared a good laugh as she quickly tossed the elongated object over her shoulder.

"I don't know what you're laughing about!" she said primly (but with a deepening blush that suggested otherwise).

"Me either," added a clueless Ron.

This caused the other two wizards to laugh even more.

Harry wasn't laughing so hard, though, to miss the fact that Hermione hadn't actually given the charmed chicken back to Fred. He marked its location as it rolled underneath the bed, and wondered if it might be retrieved by somebody later on in the day.

Hermione changed the topic of conversation before he could imagine how she might use the chicken.

"So, Fred…you've gotten a supply contract from the Ministry of Magic?" Hermione asked. "Why would they trust the effectiveness of anything sold by the same company that makes things like those chickens?"

"Ah, but they didn't award the contract to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes," Fred said with a grin. He stood up straight and with a deep announcer's voice added, _"When safety matters, trust only the best…Griffon's Nest!"_

"What's that?" Ron asked.

"Griffon's Nest Security Ltd," Fred said, proudly adding, "_Grins_ for short."

"Some kind of shell company?" Hermione asked.

Fred laughed. "Nope, we still sell sea shells out of our joke shop catalog."

"Huh? I don't get it," said Ron.

"It's like this, little brother," said Fred. "Harry had it right…nobody was going to take seriously anything sold from our original mail order catalog. But it turns out that some of the things we originally developed as gags can also be useful in other situations. So, George and I created a separate company with its own mail order catalog.

"And you call this serious company _Grins_?" Hermione asked skeptically.

"Just between friends and coworkers," Fred admitted. "It's worked out brilliantly, though. That contract with the Ministry? It was for a lot more than just these bags…you wouldn't believe how many witches or wizards out there can't do a decent shield charm." He smiled, and added, "Of course, they didn't have Harry here teaching them, but still…"

Ron arched an eyebrow. "You're selling your shield hats then?"

Fred nodded and began ticking off his fingers. "Shield hats, shield cloaks, shield gloves…half-dozen different kinds of shield shorts…"

"Why would you need six different kinds of shorts?" asked Ron.

"Boxers or briefs, little brother," Fred replied. "Then there are the more feminine options. We sell charmed bloomers, normal knickers, French-cuts and shield thongs…for the more daring witches."

Fred then waggled his eyebrows at Hermione, and with a conspirator's whisper noted, "They cost extra, though…harder to shield the entire bum when there's so little fabric to work with in the back."

"Fred!" Hermione protested.

"Shield thongs?" Harry laughed. "Sounds like you might be better off selling those out of a lingerie catalog."

"You've got it half right, partner," Fred said with a wink. "Got those for sale in the back pages of our WonderWitch catalog."

Hermione rolled her eyes, "That's another new company, I suppose?"

Fred smiled, and placed the side of his finger against his nose.

"Spot on," he said proudly.

"I was just joking," Hermione admitted.

"No, really…we've got a third company dedicated to catering to that type of customer. Surprised you haven't seen our advertisements in _Teen Witch Weekly_."

Ron snorted. "Oh, come on, Fred...What would Hermione be doing reading a girls' magazine?"

Fred and Harry each made strategic side steps away from Ron as Hermione glared at him.

"What?" Ron asked.

Hermione seethed, as Fred walked over to an unopened crate and kicked the lid open.

"Ah, thought this was the one," he said, reaching into the box and pulling out a pair of skimpy black briefs.

"Hey, Ron, these might come in handy if you plan to keep on saying dumb things like that."

"What?"

"Forget it, Fred," Hermione sighed. "I know that I'm planning to."

"Planning to do what?" Ron asked.

"Forgetting the idea of you wearing that style of shorts," she replied darkly.

"Hey!" Ron protested.

Harry tried to facilitate his own forgetting by changing the subject.

"So selling products through three companies and three different catalogs?" he asked Fred. "Must be keeping you two busy."

"Too busy, to be honest," the twin replied. "Between that Ministry contract and filling orders made for our existing product line…haven't had enough time to spend on new product development, much less get the brick and mortar shop ready for opening."

Hermione nodded. "But if the mail-order business is going so well…why even open the retail shop?"

Fred said, "Yeah, we considered that…but where's the fun in only selling out of catalogs?"

"It'd be safer," Harry noted. "Wouldn't be giving the Death Eaters another fixed target."

Fred shrugged. "Yeah, but if we didn't open up a retail shop in Diagon Alley, then we wouldn't need to rent the building. And if we didn't rent the building, we wouldn't have access to the two-bedroom flat above the shop. And if we didn't have access to the two-bedroom flat, then…"

"Then you could live here," said Ron.

The other three stared at Ron.

"What?" he protested. "It would be just as easy for them to move back here with Mum and Dad, and eat Mum's cooking, and fill the mail orders from here..."

Fred stared at his brother. "Are you serious?"

Hermione snorted, and gave Fred a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "No he's Ron…enough said?"

"Good point."

"Hey!"

"Is for horses, Ron," Harry said with a laugh. "So Fred…if you're so busy, why don't you just hire some employees?"

"We have, actually," the Twin replied. "Got a couple of lovely young ladies on the payroll. They're helping us get the storefront business ready, and will handle sales there once it opens."

"Couple of lovely young ladies, huh?" asked Harry. "So, how old are they, exactly?"

"Old enough, I'd wager," Hermione muttered. She then asked, "And are they working for straight wages? Or is room and board part of their compensation package?"

The blush on Fred's face was answer enough…for Hermione and Harry, at least.

"There's safety in numbers," he said defensively. "And they were burned out of their old place, and the Ministry says witches and wizards shouldn't go out at night if they don't have to, and…Felicity and Verity are doing a bang-up job."

Harry snorted.

"Well, they are!" Fred protested.

"So…these two witches…sisters, I suppose?" Hermione asked.

"Not twins, though," noted Fred. "Verity is almost two years younger."

"But still old enough?" asked Harry.

Hermione rolled her eyes, and asked, "Did you say that this flat has two bedrooms?"

"Yes," Fred cautiously replied.

"So you and George are still sharing a bedroom, then?"

"Why would they need to share if there's two bedrooms?" Ron asked.

Harry snorted, and gave Hermione a conspirator's wink.

"She's wondering if they're sharing, just not with each other, Ron."

"What he said," Hermione replied, pointing a finger towards Harry.

"I don't get it," Ron muttered.

Hermione giggled. "So are _you_ getting it, Fred?"

"Please!" the twin said indignantly.

Harry nudged his best friend's shoulder with his own. "Not actually a denial, is it, Hermione?"

"No, it isn't," she agreed. "So, Fred…when are you and your brother bringing Verity and Felicity home to meet your mum and dad?"

"Erm…why would we…"

"Relax, Fred," Harry interjected. "Hermione and I are just giving you a bit of good-hearted grief…right, Hermione?"

The Muggleborn witch gave her best friend an evil-looking grin.

"Of course, Harry."

"Why would Fred deserve any grief?" asked Ron.

"Why, indeed," said Harry. "So, Fred…you've got the store covered. What about the production side?"

The red-haired wizard sighed, appreciating the chance to change the topic. "We've thought about subcontracting some of the work," he noted. "But…with everything else going on, we haven't had time to review our options…have to be careful about safety and quality control…we've got a brand name to protect."

Hermione chuckled. She saw where Harry might be heading, and picked up the line of questioning. "So how many of your products involve potions?"

Fred shrugged. "We've got a full line of love potions, and then there's the potions-based products like our Skiving Snackboxes…maybe twenty percent of our products, total?"

"Love potions!" Hermione said indignantly. "How could you be selling love potions?"

"We can sell them quite easily," Fred said proudly. "We've got the best range you'll find anywhere."

"But do they actually work?" Ron asked.

"Certainly they work," Fred replied. "But only for up to twenty-four hours at a time…a bit less if the boy is heavier than normal, or the girl less…attractive."

"I can't believe it!" Hermione spat.

Neither could Harry.

"Fred, I'm thinking that your investors might have some serious concerns about that specific product line."

"Really?" the Twin asked, genuinely surprised by Harry's reaction. "Why? It's not like we're selling Amortentia, or any of the other illegal potions."

"It's unethical," Hermione said firmly. "Tricking somebody into having feelings for a person."

"Oh, jeez, they only last a day…where's the harm?" asked Ron.

Hermione glared at her red-haired friend.

"Where's the harm?" she asked. "So let's say that they were sold to somebody like…I don't know…Romilda Vane? A fan-girl who has the hots for Harry?"

"She does?" Harry asked.

"Yes, she does," Hermione replied.

"But she's only twelve!"

"Thirteen, actually," said Hermione, adding, "Ron, my point is…Imagine that she spiked a box of chocolates with a love potion keyed to her and gave them to Harry. But then you got hold of them first, and ate half the box. Would you be okay with that?"

Ron thought for a moment, then asked, "What kind of chocolates?"

"Gah!" Hermione shrieked, pulling on her bushy-brown hair as if she were a cartoon character.

"What if it were your sister, Ron…fancy lusting after Ginny for twenty-four hours straight?"

"Yechh!" Ron spat.

"No worries, there, Hermione," said Fred. "We're not selling them to our sister."

"Why not?" called a voice from the doorway.

The teens all turned and spotted black-eyed Ginny, who was channeling her mum in the way that her fists were grinding into her hips.

Hermione and Harry both found it very interesting that the younger witch ventured out of her room and entered into the conversation at that exact point in time. They kept this observation to themselves, however, as they took a step back and watched Ginny and her two brothers argue over the number of boyfriends she might or might not have. Harry found the back-and-forth informative; he hadn't known that Ginny had even dumped her "bad loser" boyfriend Michael Corner, much less bounced back with his dorm mate Dean Thomas.

The strongest and loudest words were exchanged by Ginny and Ron, which immediately made them the focus of their mother's ire when she heard the yelling and entered the fray. Ron was dragged by the ear to his room, while Ginny was ordered downstairs (if she was well enough to be out of her room, she was well enough to help her mum do the daily dusting).

Fred didn't find the conversation any more enjoyable once he was left alone with Harry and Hermione, even though it was quieter and more civil. Fred seemed genuinely shocked to learn that his mum had brewed a batch of Amortentia… his brother George and he hadn't had much contact at all with their parents over the past few weeks.

Harry's opposition to the sale of love potions by any business that he had invested in was mitigated when Fred proposed that they sell love potion neutralizers, and give them equal shelf space and product promotion. The red-haired wizard also mentioned that his brother and he were working on a potion that would make it easier for a person to resist an _Imperius_ curse and other types of controlling agents.

The-Boy-Who-Lived turned to his best friend and asked, "So what do you think?"

Molly didn't give Hermione a chance to respond.

"Fred? It's been an hour!" she shrieked from the kitchen. "Get down here and help your sister!"

The red-haired wizard looked back over his shoulder towards the doorway and sighed as he picked the charmed bag up off the floor. He looked towards his still-crated stuff and snorted.

"I've half a mind to leave the rest for her to sort through," he said quietly. "You two might get a laugh out of some of the ways she could be pranked."

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Only if you're certain that you got all of those rubber chickens."

Fred grimaced. "Right, thanks for the lovely image,"

Hermione shook her head as she cautiously kicked the unsorted pile down to the point where she could see everything that was left.

"No worries, Harry… Fred has them all."

"Except for that one you tossed under Harry's bed," Fred noted with a sly smile.

"Oh, well…I'll take care of that," she said off-handedly.

Fred chuckled as Hermione reached under Harry's bed and retrieved the charmed chicken.

"Got a safe place to put it, then?" he asked. "A nice, cozy home?"

Hermione gave the wizard a fair approximation of a hag's evil eye.

"Think your mum would wonder the same thing about Felicity and Verity? Whether they are letting you two into their cozy homes?"

The wizard's eyebrows disappeared underneath his bangs, as he held up his hands in surrender.

"Truce?" he asked.

"Sounds good to me," Hermione replied.

"FRED! Do I need to send another howler?" Molly shrieked from downstairs.

Harry winced, and shook his head.

"Would anyone know the difference?" he whispered.

"We better head down," Hermione decided.

Harry and Fred agreed, and were halfway out the door before Harry turned towards his best friend and whispered, "Hermione?"

"What?" she whispered back.

"The chicken?"

Hermione's eyes shifted down to what she still held in her hand.

"Oh…right, probably should leave it behind," she decided.

Fred and Harry's eyes went wide when Hermione decided that the best place to temporarily hide the charmed chicken was underneath his mattress. But neither said anything as she led the way downstairs.

Fred held his tongue because he was mindful of the just-negotiated truce.

Harry held his tongue because he was "mind full" of naughty thoughts about sitting rooms and charmed chickens.


	4. Chapter 4: Present Opportunities

**A Boon for Bill**

a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: **I'm not dead (yet)…just pining for the fjords. Thanks to Clell, zArkham, and the others who helped edit and commented on an earlier draft. A longer note at the end.

**Canon questions of the day**: (a) Why was it such a big deal for McGonagall to get Hermione a time turner so that she could take 12 classes, when Percy got 12 OWLs less than two years before? (b) How were the Twins able to find the time needed to create a new magical species and breed enough pairs to fill their shelves with Pygmy Puffs in time for the school rush?

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

**oo0OO00oo**

**Chapter 4: Present Opportunities**

The residual afterglow generated by spreading the good news about her son's test scores (and accepting the return compliments) occupied Molly's mind so completely that she failed to notice when the clock hand tied to a different son's magic temporarily shifted from "Mortal Peril" to "In Transit." That son tried to take advantage of her distracted state by quietly slipping from the floo connection out the Burrow's back door in search of his fiancee. He didn't get very far.

"Oh…there you are, Bill," Molly shouted from the stove, her voice carrying over the music playing on her radio. "Be a dear and help Harry bring the table out into the back yard, will you?"

"Erm…sure thing, Mum," he muttered, as he dropped his carry-all bag by the side of the door. Bill then turned back towards the kitchen and gave both Harry and Hermione a smile.

"Hey, you two…what's the occasion?"

Hermione snorted as she set salt and pepper shakers onto a tray and lifted it off of the now-cleared kitchen table.

"We got our OWL results this morning," she said. "Ron exceeded your Mum's expectations."

"More OWLs than Fred and George combined!" Molly loudly noted. "And it's not just Ron's scores, Dear…you did well, too!"

Bill grinned as he grabbed the side of the table opposite Harry and lifted. "So?" he asked.

"Hermione's results were brilliant," Harry noted brightly, as they guided the table through the doorway leading to the backyard garden. "More than Ron and me combined."

His Muggleborn friend glanced back over her shoulder and shook her head. "Oh, don't exaggerate, Harry!"

"Okay, fine…she _only_ got eleven OWLs. Not bad, considering she was only taking ten classes this year…"

"You could have petitioned to sit for the Muggle Studies OWL exam and passed it just as easily as I did," Hermione countered.

"Yeah, I probably could have gotten the OWL," Harry reasoned. "But gotten an Outstanding? Just as easily as you did? Don't think so."

Hermione shook her head again as she bit her tongue. They had been down this road before, and she saw little gain in the rehashing of old arguments.

"So, Harry?" Bill asked, as they maneuvered the table onto the flat patch of lawn used whenever they dined al fresco.

"Seven…same as Ron," he replied.

"Well done!"

"They're not the same as Ron's," Hermione countered. "He didn't get an O in DADA…you did."

"Just the one though," Harry noted. "Not like I got ten Outstandings…or twelve, for that matter."

Hermione looked down at the tray in her hand, trying hard not to dwell on the painful decision that she'd made at the end of her third year to give up her time-turner and drop Divination.

"Will you two spread out the table linen?" she asked, nodding towards the brightly-colored cloth that was tucked under her arm as she held the tray in her hands.

"Might need to enlarge the table first," Harry noted.

"How big is the guest list?" Bill asked.

Hermione thought for a moment. "George was pressed into coming home to help his brother clean their old room…they're probably both staying for dinner. And I heard Molly floo your dad asking him to invite Auror Tonks…"

"When will she give up on her matchmaking?" Bill wondered. "We better not start eating before Fleur can join us!"

"We aren't," Harry quipped. "Ron specifically asked that she be at the party."

"He did, did he?" Bill asked in a dangerous tone of voice.

"Don't mind your brother," said Hermione. "He's still befuddled after she zapped him this morning."

"And why in Merlin's name did she do that?"

"Bit of a story there," Hermione replied.

"Looking forward to hearing it," Bill said firmly. Putting the issue aside, he mentally counted heads, then declared, "Okay, so if that's everyone, we'll only need to fetch two extra table leaves."

"Why don't you just magically enlarge it?" asked Harry.

"For the same reason why we had to carry the table out here like this," Bill countered. "Mum had it made magically-resistant years ago."

"Why would she do that?" asked Hermione.

"Cut down on the accidental magic and pranking. Mum got tired of the veggies disappearing from plates and annoyed when litlle Ronnikins always managed an extra helping of pudding," Bill replied. "Easier to charm one table than a dozen different plates, I guess."

"Ah…makes sense," Harry decided.

"Oi! Hermione!" someone shouted. "Mum wants you to give me a hand with hanging this banner."

The three turned back towards the house and spotted Ron struggling with a Muggle stepladder along the back side of the house.

"Why doesn't she just levitate it into place and use sticking charms?" Hermione called back. "Or have Bill do it?"

Ron shrugged. "Why did we clean out Headquarters by hand? It's what Mum wants."

The Muggleborn witch rolled her eyes.

"Speaking of giving up on her matchmaking," she muttered. Hermione then set her tray on the table and turned towards the other two.

"Think that Ginny will be sent out next with a job to share with you, Harry?"

The-Boy-Who-Lived shook his head. "Not until Auror Tonks shows up to mind my liegeman," he quipped. "Wouldn't want to free him up for a bit of muddling with Fleur, would we?"

"Sounds like a fine idea to me," said Bill.

"William?" Molly shouted from inside the house. "Will you and Harry come fetch the benches?"

Harry chuckled, observing, "The matchmaker thinks otherwise."

Bill rolled his eyes. "C'mon then, Milord."

The-Boy-Who-Lived nodded, and, having picked up on his bushy-haired friend's mood, waited until they were a few steps away from her to ask a question.

"Speaking of twelve OWLs…how the hell did _you_ do it?"

The older wizard shrugged. "Hard work, careful planning, and a monastic lifestyle?"

Harry snorted. "Yeah, right. I'm asking how you did it…not how Percy did it."

"No, really," Bill insisted. "I would have never gotten twelve OWLs if Fleur and I had hooked up while I was still in school."

This caused Harry to laugh out loud. "I suppose that's true enough, Old Man. Fleur would have been, what…six-years old during your Fifth Year?"

"Nine," Bill said defensively.

"Six, nine…same difference," Harry declared. "Would have been hard to sit for twelve exams after you had been expelled for under-aged sex."

Bill growled. "Notes the man who really does have an eight-year old part-Veela who wants to sit on his hook?"

Harry winced as he followed his potential liegeman back inside the kitchen. "Okay, okay…truce!" he hissed, not wishing Molly to pick up on the conversation as she stirred in front of the stove.

Bill nodded his agreement and shrank down the two long wooden benches with a wave of his wand. "I'll get the leaves if you can get these, then?"

"Sure," Harry replied. He picked up his line of questioning once they were back outside, and had walked past the argument that had already begun between Ron and Hermione over how best to hang the _"Well done, Ron!"_ banner.

"So Bill, what I was really asking was...how were you even able to fit twelve courses into your school schedule? Did McGonagall get you a time turner as well?"

The red-haired wizard squinted at Harry and cocked his head in confusion.

"So the rumor was true, then?"

"Which one?" Harry asked.

"The one where a third-year Muggleborn student was entrusted with a heavily-regulated magical object capable of destroying the time-space continuum just so that she could sit for all twelve classes at Hogwarts?"

"Erm...yeah, that one's true enough," Harry replied. "So I'm guessing you just sat for two extra exams, rather than one like Hermione did?"

Bill shook his head. "No, I sat for all twelve classes, and didn't need a time turner to do it…same with Percy."

"How, then?"

"The schedule allowed for it," Bill admitted.

"Not when we had to sign up for electives," Harry noted.

"That's true as well," Bill replied. "They changed the schedule the year after Percy ran the table."

"How?"

Bill shrugged. "Mostly by lengthening class hours, from what I hear…and rearranging the class schedules to ensure that there would be conflicts between certain electives."

"Why, though?"

"You'd have to ask Dumbledore and the Board of Governors," said Bill. "I think the stated rationale involved increasing the focus on core subjects."

"So what was the unstated reason? Saving money on staff?"

Bill nodded. "Students were signing up for all twelve courses just for the challenge of bagging all twelve. Made for larger class sizes…but now that it is impossible to do all twelve OWLs, the enrollments in elective courses like Ancient Runes and Arithmancy have really dropped. Those professors only teach part-time now, right?"

Harry shrugged.

"It also allows Dumbledore to keep a ghost on staff, salary-free," Bill noted. "Most of the students shooting for twelve OWLs got tripped up on History…Binns doesn't exactly teach to the test, what with all of the time he spends on the Goblin Wars. Parents were complaining."

"With good reason," said Harry.

Bill nodded. "Those weren't the only complaints, though…the Board of Governors used to get all kinds of grief from the pureblood parents over Muggleborn curriculum bias."

"Bias towards Muggleborns?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Yeah, I know…it sounds ridiculous," Bill admitted. "Pureblood students get a big head-start over Muggleborns just by growing up in the Magical world…"

"And get their other leg up by being able to practice magic in their Pureblood homes over holidays!"

"Not here," Bill said defensively.

Harry nodded. "You know what I mean, though."

"Sure I do, since it put me at the same disadvantage."

"So how in Merlin's name could the curriculum be biased towards Muggleborns?"

"Muggle Studies," Bill replied. "It's essentially a free OWL for anyone raised in the Muggle world. Pureblood parents argued that there wasn't an equivalent 'Easy O' for their children that centered on the Wizarding World."

"As long as you don't count History of Magic, or Transfiguration, or Charms, or Care of Magical Creatures…"

"Fair enough," Bill shot back, his hands held up defensively.

"And anyone who thinks that Muggleborns don't have to revise for the Muggle Studies exam must be…I'd say crazy, but Pureblood is probably also applicable."

"Because the curriculum is a little dated?" asked Bill.

Harry snorted. "A little dated? Try a hundred years out-of-date. Hermione actually had to revise for the exam by reading Muggle history books on what life was like during the Victorian Era."

Bill nodded in understanding, then changed the subject.

"So…decided on your coursework yet?"

Harry nodded. "Just the core five for NEWT level. Caught a bit of a break on Potions…my E wouldn't have been good enough to get into Snape's NEWT-level potions."

Bill chuckled. "I'm sure that you'll be paid back in spades in DADA, though."

"No doubt," whined Harry.

The two wizards finished getting the dinner table set up and dressed just about the time that Ron and Hermione got the banner hung, which was also when Arthur and Tonks stepped out of the floo, and Ginny finally emerged from her bedroom bruise-free, and Molly announced that the food was ready. This all happened a full fifteen minutes before Fleur's shift was done, and it was only Fred and George's insistence that they only needed a few more minutes to finish in Harry's bedroom that kept Bill and his mother from having a huge row over whether to wait for his fiancee…Fleur's replacement popped out of the floo just as the Twins emerged from the stairwell with beads of sweat dripping from their brows and large bags slung over their shoulders.

Molly grudgingly dispatched Kingsley Shacklebolt to the ward line with a full plate of food. She then insisted that everyone sit down according to her seating chart once Fleur arrived. The chart was as predictable as it was obvious. Ron at the head, with Hermione on his right and Harry on his left. Ginny next to Harry, Bill next to Hermione with Tonks on his other side…and as many other bodies as possible separating the Gringotts employee from his fiancee's place at the end of the table opposite Ron. Those affected generally took the machinations in good humor, knowing them for what they were.

Harry and Hermione paid close attention to the food as it was passed around the table. Bill and Fleur were just as diligent, although they all tried not to appear that way. None of them wanted to touch anything that Molly had cooked until somebody else had tasted or sipped it first. Ron's lack of table manners made this a relatively easy task, and Fred helped out by quickly taste-testing whatever his younger brother didn't immediately inhale. That Molly and Ginny didn't seem to be tracking who ate what (and in what order) caused Harry to wonder whether all of the concern over love potions was perhaps a bit overblown.

Ginny spent most of her time at the table pouting over just how beautiful Fleur looked despite spending a full day out in the sun on the ward line. Her occasionally audible snarky comments were left unchallenged, though, with almost all of the dinner conversation centered around Ron's OWL results. The ill-mannered wizard winced each time that his mum repeated the fact that he'd been awarded more OWLs than his twin brothers had gotten behind…more from worry than embarrassment. He didn't at all like the way that Fred and George looked at him each time that Molly spouted off, and was therefore relieved when his brothers apologized for not having enough time to customize the fireworks display that they planned on setting off after cake. The Twins, in turn, were relieved that Hermione had been keeping up her side of the truce, and hadn't insisted that a couple of more plates be added to the table for Felicity and Verity.

It was towards the end of the meal that Fred and George tried to make amends with Ginny over the telescope incident. She eyed the garishly wrapped box that they placed before her with a healthy (and justifiable) amount of suspicion.

"What's this then?" she demanded.

"Just a little something to make amends," said Fred.

"Although you really shouldn't have been mucking around in our stuff in the first place," George added.

"George!" Molly spat.

"Yes, Mum?"

"Fred!"

"What, Mum?"

"This isn't another one of your jokes, is it?"

"No, no…not at all!" he protested.

"So it's not going to explode in my face if I open it?" Ginny asked warily.

"Promise!" Fred declared.

"Fine…then you open it!" said Ginny, as she rose and stepped back from the table.

Her older brother sighed.

"Is that level of distrust called for?" Fred asked.

"Yes!" Ginny and a number of others replied.

Molly took matters (and her wand) into her own hand and vanished the wrapping paper with a well-aimed _Evanesco_ down the length of the table. This revealed a small metal cage that held two balls of thick fur…one pink, and one purple.

"Oooh! They're so cute!" Ginny squealed, as she snatched the cage away from her brother and took hold of its door latch. But then she remembered who the gift-givers were, and pulled her hand back.

"They aren't going to explode once I touch them, will they?"

"Of course not," Fred scoffed.

Ginny's curiosity overcame caution, and she quickly liberated the two living fur balls.

"Fred? George? What are they?" Molly demanded.

"They're called 'Tribbles'," said George.

Hermione snorted out a loud laugh.

"Didn't realize you two were Trekkies."

"We're what?" asked Fred."

"Trekkies….Star Trek fans….?"

"Dunno what you're talking about," said George. "That's what we were told they are called. Maybe it's because it's in French…hey Fleur, how do you say _'_Lez Tribbles' in Engish?"

The part-Veela shared some eye-contact with Hermione as they both giggled.

"Eet eez ze same een English," the French witch noted.

"Well, then we'll have to come up with a better name, then," said George.

"They look like baby puffskeins to me," Bill noted.

"Actually, they're full-sized adults," countered Fred. "At least we hope that they are…they are supposed to be a mating pair, after all."

"A mating pair?" Arthur asked in a rising tone of voice. He glanced nervously towards Tonks and added, "You two boys do know that there are laws against breeding new magical species, right?"

"Of course we do, Dad!" George protested. "Do you think that Fred and I would blatantly disregard Ministry regulations?"

Amidst a table-full of guffaws, Arthur shook his head and replied, "No, you two are usually discreet in your disregard."

Fred rolled his eyes. "Well, sorry to disappoint everyone."

"We really should take it as a compliment, oh brother of mine!" said George.

"How so?"

"That they would think we are industrious enough, and devious enough, and clever enough to develop an entirely new breed of magical species in such a short period of time…on top of everything else that we are doing to get the shop ready for business."

"I suppose so," Fred agreed brightly. He glanced around the table and added, "Just to be clear, when we bought these two little balls of fur they looked just the same as they do now."

"You bought them as a gift, to make up for that stupid telescope?" asked Ginny.

"Erm…."

"You're forgiven," the red-haired witch decided brightly.

"I've never seen anything like them before," said Bill. "I can't believe that you two went all the way to France to buy them."

George shook his head. "The bloke we bought them from was French, but we met him down on his boat off the coast…Isle of Wight, I think."

"You can buy them on Wight, then?" asked Harry.

George sighed and shook his head. "Only place in Britain that you're supposed to be able to buy them was our store…at least, that's what it said in our franchise agreement."

Auror Tonks chose that moment to join the discussion.

"So let me get this straight," she asked. "An unlicensed breeder smuggled these two pygmy-sized puffskeins into the country from France. You bought the little fur balls and planned on breeding them so that you could sell the offspring in your new store?"

Fred and George locked eyes and held a silent, but extensive discussion. Reaching a conclusion, they turned towards the Auror and shrugged.

"That's a pretty good summary," Fred admitted.

Tonks snorted. "Do you know how many licenses and permits you need from the Ministry to do all that?"

"Why yes, actually," said George. "Seven."

"And you have all of those licenses and permits?"

George scoffed at the accusation as he reached into the inside pocket of his robes and slammed a small stack of parchment down onto the table. "Six of the seven, actually," he said defensively. "No sense bribing the official who would issue us the permit needed to sell them in our store until we actually have something to sell."

"Huh," Tonks snorted. "Well okay, then."

"Bribing officials?" Hermione asked.

"Erm…how else do you get things done at the Ministry?" asked George.

Hermione narrowed her gaze, then shifted it from the Twin to his father. Arthur shrugged.

"It's a fair question," he admitted. "Galleons get things done…not in my Department, of course…"

"Or in the DMLE," Tonks was quick to add. "But if you need a permit or license to open a shop, or import some exotic potion ingredients…you mean that it isn't the same in the Muggle world?"

Hermione shook her head. "Maybe in some countries, but not in Britain."

Harry chuckled. "As far as you know."

The Muggleborn witch rolled her eyes. "Fine. Can I at least say that if there are bribes being made that it's not as commonly accepted a practice or as openly talked as it appears to be here in Magical Britain?"

The-Boy-Who-Lived shrugged. "Sure."

Ron let out a deep breath and jumped in with what he thought was a more worthy topic of discussion.

"So why are you giving 'em to Ginny?"

"Would you please lay off on the jealous git routine, Ron?" asked Bill.

Molly pursed her lips. "It's still a fair question, though, given all of the effort you spent getting them."

"Erm…because we felt so bad about inadvertently pranking our little sister?"

"And?" Molly asked with a rising tone of voice.

"And because she's obviously better suited for playing with the little puffs of fur than we are?" asked George.

"And…?" asked Ginny.

"And…we haven't had any luck getting them to mate," Fred said with a sigh. "Been following the translated care and feeding instructions, and done what you need to do in order for them to shag like bunnies…"

"Language!" Molly scolded.

"How do you know that they haven't?" asked Harry. "Maybe one of them is still pregnant, or something?"

"Supposed to pop out a litter every two weeks," George replied. "We've had them for three."

"Are you sure that you bought a mating pair?" asked Harry, glancing down at the pint-sized pets who were licking food off of Ginny's plate. "You know…male and female?"

"Of course they bought one of each, Silly," Ginny chided. "The purple one is a boy, and the pink one is a girl."

"How can you tell?" asked Ron.

George laughed. "Well, little brother, the boy has the wand, and the girl has the wand holster…"

"Hush!" Molly hissed.

"Right," said Fred. "So we haven't had much luck, and don't have any more time available to figure out how to get them to mate…."

"Of course you wouldn't," Ginny scoffed. "You're boys."

Arthur cleared his throat. "Should I wonder what you know about getting pets to mate, young lady?"

"Father!" Ginny whined. "I'm not a little girl any more. And whose job is it to mind the chicken coop, and collect the eggs and to keep the rooster from fertilizing them unless we want chicks…"

"Alright, alright," Arthur cut in, quickly backing down.

Harry smiled at the exchange.

"So what do you think it would take, Ginny?" he teased. "Build them a little love nest in front of the Wireless and play some Celestina Warbeck tunes?"

"Oh, please, Harry!" the red-haired witch protested.

Bill snorted, and said something under his breath about his mother's musical tastes that only Hermione and Tonks were close enough to hear. They both broke out into giggles.

"What was that, William?" asked Molly.

"Nothing!" he quickly declared.

"So are you two giving up on breeding the fur balls?" asked Ron, "Or are you just fobbing off the work to Ginny?"

"They are presents," George insisted.

"No strings attached," his brother added.

"Although, if Gin-Gin was able to actually get the little buggers to boff…"

"We would be more than happy to take the offspring off of her hands…"

"Just so the Burrow isn't overrun with the furry-little sprogs, of course."

Harry laughed. "So you _are_ fobbing off the work, aren't you?"

Ginny frowned. She loved the little creatures, but didn't like the idea of her brothers taking advantage of her.

"Of course they aren't going to fob off the work," she insisted. "They're going to pay me for it."

"What?" asked George.

"You are asking me do breeding work for you two, aren't you?" asked Ginny sweetly. "And you are going to pay me a salary for that work, right?"

"Erm…but they're a gift!" George insisted.

Fred's eyes darted from his brother, to his sister, and then to his Mum. Taking in their apparent attitudes, he made a command decision.

"We can't afford to pay you a weekly salary right now, Little Sis," he stated. "But what we can offer is a pay-for-performance plan."

"We can?" asked George.

"Yes, we can," Fred replied firmly. "If Ginny can get the fur balls to perform, then we can pay."

"How much?" asked Ginny.

"Erm….five sickles a pup?"

"Only five?"

"Fred!" Molly shouted.

"Yes, Mum?"

"You will not take advantage of your sister!" she declared. "And you are not going to occupy her time this Summer with wild schemes and unreasonable demands on her time."

"But Mum!" Ginny whined. "You never let me get a summer job…this could be a way for me to earn some money."

George arched an eyebrow and leaned across the table.

"Ten sickles, then?" he whispered loudly towards Ginny.

"Fifty," she replied.

"Fifty sickles?"

"Fifty percent of the retail price," Ginny replied.

"No!" Molly barked. "You have more than enough chores to do while you are home, young lady!"

"But I'm not doing chores all of the time," Ginny countered. "Why can't I decide for myself how to spend the rest of the day?"

"You know perfectly well that you should be spending your free time with Harry," Molly snapped. Hearing somebody catch their breath, she quickly added, "And Hermione of course, and your brother Bill now that he's back home…"

Arthur tried to defuse the situation by placing a hand on his wife's arm and talking in a reasonable tone of voice.

"Now Molly, it's not Ginny's fault that she can't venture out beyond the ward line to earn some spending money this Summer…"

"That doesn't mean that…"

"And we've already established what chores the children are responsible for, correct?"

"Yes, but what if something comes up and I need her help?"

"Then it would be far better that she be earning money at home, rather than working outside the home on a fixed schedule, wouldn't it?" Arthur asked. He turned towards the Twins and asked them, "These…Tribbles…will they require a large amount of Ginny's time?"

"Not at all," Fred replied. "Supposed to be very low-maintenance…we wouldn't have bothered with them otherwise."

"There you go, then," said Arthur.

"But Ginny doesn't need to earn spending money, now that you've been promoted, Dear," Molly countered.

"Which makes this an even better opportunity," Arthur reasoned. "If she wants to make this her pet project over holidays…"

"So to speak," quipped Bill.

Arthur chuckled. "If Ginny can help her brothers and be adequately compensated for that help without shirking her duties around the Burrow, great. And if it doesn't work out, then…where's the harm?

Molly scrunched her lips together in a way that puffed out both cheeks and jowls.

"I won't have those fur balls cluttering up the house," she declared.

"No worries, Mum…I'll keep them in my room," Ginny promised.

"Where?" asked Molly. "You've already been complaining about sharing space with Fleur?"

"I'm sure that they won't take up much room, Mum!"

The Weasley Matron sucked in a deep breath, and held it as she mulled how the request might be meshed within the weave of all of her other plans for the holidays.

"Alright, then," she declared, expelling that deep held breath. "Ginny, you will keep those animals in your room."

Thanks, Mum!"

"Fleur?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley?"

"I would like you to share a room with Hermione. That will give Ginny the room she needs for raising her pets."

The part-Veela made eye-contact first with Hermione, and then with Bill. Biting on the inside of her cheeks so as to avoid revealing her excitement with a wide smile, Fleur nodded solemnly and replied, "Eef you think zat eez best, Mrs. Weasley."

Molly nodded, then turned to Hermione. "Sharing a room with Fleur will take care of that other problem that you asked about earlier this afternoon, don't you think?"

The Muggleborn witch caught her breath as she caught Harry's eye. He shrugged. She nodded.

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley," she replied quietly.

Ron might have wondered what this last exchange was all about, had he not more important things on his mind.

"Can we have cake now?"

**oo00OO00oo**

Later that evening, Bill was cutting through their small orchard when he came across Harry reading a book with his back up against one of the plum trees.

"So what are you doing out here alone?" he asked, taking a seat on the ground next to the younger wizard.

"Isn't it obvious?" Harry replied, placing a bookmark on the page and setting the text onto the ground next to him. "I have been waiting to hear all about my liegeman's courtship stroll along the ward line with the lovely Miss Tonks."

"Oh, sod off."

Harry cleared his throat.

Bill rolled his eyes and tried again.

"Sod off...Milord?"

"That's better," said Harry. "So where is the lovely Miss Tonks, then?"

"Stepped across the ward line once we made the circuit and apparated home. Any particular reason why you are asking?"

Harry shrugged. "Just curious."

"So…really," said Bill. "Why _are_ you out here by yourself? Wouldn't think that Mum would allow it."

Harry shrugged.

"Your brothers are supposed to be keeping an eye on me," he stated, pointing towards the backyard Quidditch Pitch.

"Obviously," Bill said sarcastically, as he watched Fred and George gleefully pepper his youngest brother with Quaffles. "Thought that they'd be back in their flat by now."

"And miss the chance to hurl hard objects towards the boy who got more OWLs than both of them combined?" asked Harry.

Bill laughed. "Shame that you can't be up there as well."

"S'alright," said Harry, picking his reading material off of the ground. "This book you brought back from the bank on estate management makes for interesting reading."

"Really?" asked Bill. "I kind of think that high finance accounting business is rather…unexciting."

"Oh, I haven't even skimmed those areas," Harry replied. "I'm talking about the chapters that cover inheritance laws, magical guardians, and the training of scions within Ancient and Noble Houses."

"Ah…so I was right in assuming that your magical guardian hadn't made you aware of your rights and responsibilities, Milord?"

"Quite right."

"So why are you so calm right now?" asked Bill.

Harry sighed. "Spilt milk, water under bridges, and all that. Plus, things are bound to be better now that I've got a liegeman in my corner, right?"

Bill didn't understand the Muggle metaphor (a metaphor that Harry had heard far too many times on Privet Drive given his cousin's boxing lessons), but guessed its meaning and nodded in agreement.

"A very mature attitude, Milord."

"I try," Harry said with a smirk. "But I also have to admit that it's hard to stay angry about anything when there are so many more pleasant things to dwell on. The last twenty-four hours have been rather…eventful."

Bill chuckled, thinking that Harry was alluding to Hermione's response to Fleur's release the night before. He then asked, "So where is everyone else?"

"Let's see…your dad is puttering in his shed, and your Mum is doing a bit of brewing in the kitchen…healing potions, don't you know?"

"Of course."

"Ginny is in her room with the Pygmy Puffs…"

"So that's what they finally decided on calling them?"

"Guess so. I voted for 'Tribbles', but your Mum…well, as far as she knows 'Tribbles' is a French word, and she isn't very fond of imports these days, is she?"

Bill sighed. "Fleur and Hermione, then?"

"Sorting out their new room," Harry replied.

The older wizard nodded. "What was that shared look between you and Hermione about when Mum decided on the switch?"

Harry sighed as he lamented a lost opportunity. "You know that Hermione needs to practice low-level spells each day as part of her treatment regimen, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, she decided that she needed somebody other than Crookshanks to aim at, and asked Molly if I could be the target."

"She wanted you alone in her bedroom, huh?" Bill asked.

"Not necessarily," Harry quickly replied. "She just needs somebody to help her practice spells. Ron and Ginny aren't supposed to know that she's spellcasting over the hols, so that's why she's kept it in her room."

"But you?"

Harry shrugged. "You and Fleur aren't around all the time, are you?" he asked. "So that's what the look was about. Moving Fleur in with Hermione keeps me out of her bedroom…and allowed your Mum to draw that ward line."

"What ward line?" Bill asked.

Harry snorted. "Oh, yeah…you were out courting Tonks when she did that….there's a new '_No boys allowed'_ barrier across the doorway to Percy's bedroom."

"She didn't!"

"Afraid so," Harry replied. "Which is why I've got a new roommate as well."

"Me?"

"No…Crookshanks…poor guy got a heckuva shock when he tried to walk into Hermione's bedroom tonight."

"Oh."

"Not that I wouldn't mind you bunking with me," Harry was quick to add.

"Guess we'll have to line up a summer project for Ron to make that happen," Bill reasoned.

"We're working on that, actually."

"Really?"

Harry nodded, and proceeded to describe everything that had happened while Bill was at work. Or almost everything…no mention was made of how his fiancee was able to comment with authority on Harry's 'dragon-sized' bits.

"So that's our grand plan, then," Harry concluded. "We want to do more than just sit around and play Exploding Snap all Summer. Just need to do is convince your Mum that Fred and George's shop will be more successful if we help them brew up some of their product line…maybe even do some spell work and help charm the shield hats and shield knickers."

"It's a decent idea," Bill reasoned. "Although at your age, you should be more worried about getting into a girl's knickers than shielding them."

Harry chuckled. "Yes, I suppose that once I get to be an old man like you that I won't be so interested in that sort of thing."

"Oh, no," said Bill. "The interest is there…it's just a little more focused."

Harry laughed. "Yeah, I heard about your focused interests. And about Fleur's as well."

Bill gave Harry a rather hard, closed-lip glare.

"Only indirectly, of course," the younger wizard replied, realizing how his comment could be taken the wrong way.

"I'm listening."

"Right, well…it's actually something that I was hoping to ask you about," Harry replied, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

"You want to ask me about Fleur's taste in knickers?"

"No, no…not at all," said Harry. "I'm talking about the catalogs she uses to buy her knickers."

Bill glared at the younger wizard.

"Erm, yeah…doesn't sound that much better, does it?" Harry asked nervously. "What I meant was…Hermione and I were talking about shorts and knickers this afternoon…"

"You and Hermione, huh?"

"It was a perfectly innocent conversation," Harry replied. "We were doing the laundry."

"Of course, it makes perfect sense…I always talked about knickers when I helped Mum do the laundry," Bill quipped.

"Eeew! Don't know if want to know the details, Mate."

"Sod off…Milord."

"Anyway," Harry continued, "during the course of that conversation I let slip the fact that I only own one decent pair of boxer shorts. Hermione said that she wanted to fix that situation, and noted that my birthday was coming up."

"And what does this have to do with Fleur's choice in knickers?"

"Her mail-order catalogs," admitted Harry. "Hermione said that Fleur lent them to her…and that you and Fleur have…well…made use of them."

"You're putting me on!"

"No, really…that's what Hermione said."

"Oh, bugger me!" Bill hissed.

Harry snorted. "No thanks, I wouldn't want to risk your fiancee's fireballs."

"Oh will you just…Merlin, I hope that she erased the images first."

"What images?"

"The ones in the catalogs."

Harry frowned. "Kind of hard to know what to order if the pictures have been erased, isn't it?"

"No, you don't understand," Bill insisted. "They are magical mail-order clothes catalogs."

"Okay…so they sell robes and pointy hats?"

"No, I mean the catalogs themselves are magical!" Bill snapped. "They have a built in magical camera on the inside cover…and once you strip down and take a picture of yourself the catalog swaps your body for the manikins on both the cover and the inside pages."

"Okay, sounds like a useful idea…"

Harry's face paled when he realized the fuller implications.

"Unless it's an underwear catalog that gets passed around after you've swapped your body," he whispered.

"Exactly," said Bill. "No big deal if it's just your girlfriend who is ogling at you wearing thongs in twelve different colors…even if you haven't ever worn one in real life. Shopping that way with Fleur turned out to be a very enjoyable…erm, experience."

"When you two were shopping for you, or for her?"

"Yes."

"So…there's this way to erase your image after you're done shopping that keeps the next person from seeing a dozen different pictures of your thong-covered bits?"

"You make it sound like it'd be a painful experience."

"And you make it sound as if my opinions matter when it comes to how you'd look in a thong!" Harry quipped.

"Don't care about you seeing those pictures of me…it's Hermione. Or what if Mum got hold of that catalog?"

Harry chuckled. "Reckon' it depends on how naughty those catalog outfits get."

Bill let out a loud sigh. "Ever hear of something called a poser pouch?"

"Should I have?"

"Remember what Fleur had on last night?"

"Erm…yeah. Vaguely. Very vaguely."

"Well imagine something that is a hundred times smaller and a hundred times naughtier, then imagine me wearing it."

Harry shook his head. "Do you really want me imagine you wearing a black lace corset?"

Bill rolled his eyes. "Guess you'll be able to see for yourself…and _see _yourself, for that matter."

"Guess so."

A snort escaped from Bill's nose.

"What?" asked Harry.

"Nothing."

"Doesn't sound like nothing."

"I just remembered what you said earlier…that Hermione wanted to shop for birthday presents. Guess she'll get to see yourself for herself, then?"

"Oh, shit."

"Exactly."

"Oh…._shit!"_

"Yes, we've established the existence of excrement."

"No, I just remembered…when she offered to help pick out new underwear for me, I teased her by saying that it would only be fair if I got to help pick out a few items from Fleur's lingerie catalog for her."

"And?"

"And she agreed with me."

"Right, well…that's interesting, isn't it?"

"Aren't you going to worry about Fleur forgetting to erase her photographs before I get my hands on the lingerie catalog?" asked Harry.

"Not a problem."

"You don't care?"

"Of course I do," Bill said. "It's not a problem because it wouldn't happen."

Harry frowned as he balanced Bill's confidence against the glimpse that Fleur had provided the night before.

"Think so?"

"Of course," the older wizard replied. "If Hermione is going to let you help pick out some lingerie for her to wear, it's going to be her barely-covered bits displayed in the catalog, not my fiancee's."

"Oh. Right. So that's….that's better then," Harry reasoned.

"I think so," Bill replied with a grin. "So you…and Hermione…?"

"What?" Harry asked. "Do you think that we are…."

"Doesn't matter what I think. I'll just say that it's a pretty brave step for you two to be taking if you aren't more than just good friends."

"Well, we are Gryffindors."

"So is McGonagall…plan on swapping nudie pics with her?"

"No!"

"Dumbledore, then?"

"No!" Harry protested. He took in a few large breaths as he gathered his wits, then asked, "Will we really be swapping nudie pics?"

Bill chuckled and shook his head. "No I was just teasing you a bit. She won't get to see your dangly bits dangle…much."

"Well that's good."

"You think so?" Bill asked. He shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, the other way to look at it is that you have to give something to get something. The catalogs work the same way…so if she got to see all of you, you would be able to see all of her."

"Yes, well…I'm not sure that we're ready for something like that," said Harry.

"Fair enough...nice pronoun, by the way."

"Which one?"

"The 'we,' that are taking shared steps towards a shared display of bare bits," Bill quipped.

"Oh, sod off!" Harry hissed.

"Yes, Milord."

Harry rolled his eyes and sighed. He was halfway to mentally composing better answer when Molly interrupted his train of thought with a _Sonorus_-aided shout out the Burrow's back door.

"Time to come inside!"

Bill shook his head. "That's my mum," he sighed. "So when does the fashion show start, Milord?"

Harry shook his head as he stood up and brushed the dirt and leaves off of his trousers. "Might be never," he replied. "We didn't discuss the details, and with the way that all of us are being monitored by Matchmaker Molly…how do you suppose she'd even be able to get the catalog to me?"

The older wizard chuckled as he patted Harry on the back. "Where there is a will, there's a way Milord. If she wants you bad enough…"

"You mean if she wants to see me bad enough?"

"That too."

**oo00OO00oo**

The strong smell of a simmering potion hit Bill and Harry's olfactory senses as they followed Ron and the Twins inside. The curse-breaker arched an eyebrow and drifted towards the stove.

"That really is a healing potion, isn't it?" he asked, with a touch of surprise in his voice.

"What did you think it was?" Molly quickly replied. "If you're looking for something to eat, there's leftovers in the cold box."

"Excellent!" Ron declared, making a beeline towards the roast beef.

Fred and George saw their chance and said their good-byes. The smiles on their faces as they called out their floo address and disappeared into the flames were a little disconcerting to Harry. The twins were either up to something (and they were always up to something), or they were just really happy to be escaping their mother's purview. Or maybe they were just anticipating getting back to the flat they shared with their female employees. Those two last possibilities would have definitely put a smile on Harry's face so he shrugged it off.

Molly suggested that Bill, Harry and Ron play a game of gobstones in the sitting room. Bill reminded his mum that he was twenty-five years old, and not five, but she didn't care. She did, however, yell up the stairs for Ginny and Hermione to come down and join "the other children" to play the game.

If Harry weren't so distracted, he would have laughed out loud.

It was torture for him…the pervy thoughts about unsupervised activities in flats shared with girlfriends just amplified the worrying and wondering about what might happen that evening with the catalogs. Fleur and Hermione only made it worse when they came downstairs full of smiles and conspiratorial winks that were suitable for opened-ended interpretations. Ginny was right behind the other two witches with a Pygmy Puff perched on each shoulder. She quickly slipped into the sitting room before her mum noticed, pulled a deck of Exploding Snap cards out of her pocket, and pushed the coffee table to one side of the room.

"Let's play on the floor," she decided, as she sat down on the carpet and leaned her back against the front of the sofa. "Easier for us to relax and spread out that way."

The-Boy-Who-Lived coughed up a bit of spittle as his eyes darted towards Hermione in search of a reaction. She arched an eyebrow.

"Something wrong, Harry?"

"No, I'm fine…thanks," he wheezed, trying desperately not to react physically to the mental image of Hermione "spreading herself out" and playing in that very same room the night before.

Ginny ignored the exchange. "Come sit next to me, Harry," she asked. "Arnold wants to say hello."

"Arnold?"

"The boy pygmy puff," Ginny replied, nodding towards the purple fur ball on her left shoulder.

Harry started to worry when he noticed just how close the spot that Ginny was patting on the carpet was to her hip. Crookshanks came to the rescue, though, when he curled his tail around Harry's leg and began staring at the Pygmy Puffs the same way that Ron stared down his supper.

"My new bunk-mate and I should probably sit across from you Ginny," Harry said. "Just in case."

The red-haired witch looked disappointed, but quickly recovered and nodded as she began to calculate just how far forward she could bend without the others realizing she was offering Harry a view of her relatively modest cleavage.

Fleur gave Hermione a little push towards Harry's left side as she dropped down onto her knees on his right. Ron claimed the spot next to Hermione, Bill sat in between his sister and his fiancee, and the places (and stage) were set.

Harry proceeded to play his worst game of Exploding Snap ever, losing every other hand with a loud bang. It was just too hard for him to focus, given his musings about Hermione's rubbing the night before, and her potential modeling later that night. Ron was quick to tease Harry about his string of bad hands, but was equally slow to pick up on the reasons behind it. Ginny, of course, thought that she was the distraction. The other three either knew or strongly suspected the real reasons, but hid their assumptions well.

There was more to the-Boy-Who-Lived's poor game play than just his pervy imagination, though. He was certain to be chaperoned the entire night, by either Ron, Ginny or Molly. There wouldn't be an easy way for Hermione and him to steal any private time that would allow for catalogs and plans to be shared. But like Bill had said, Hermione was a clever girl, and if she wanted to convey a secret message or pass contraband right under their minders' noses, she would find a way. And since this way might involve hidden code words or other clues that only he could decipher, he paid close attention to everything except his cards. Every innocent comment made by Fleur was scrutinized just as thoroughly, since Harry couldn't discount the possibility of her acting as a co-conspirator.

But there was nothing. Or at least, he couldn't find anything, which meant that he was either too dense to pick up on the offered clues, or that she might have changed her mind, or gotten scared off. Not knowing which was the case was annoying…but not half as annoying as the wry grin that was glued to Bill's face. The older wizard claimed that he was just happy to be playing a game that he hadn't played in years, but Harry knew better…he knew that the older wizard was mentally laughing like hell at his future liegelord's predicament.

Molly had called them into the house at dusk, and given the time of year and Devon's latitude that was fairly late in the evening. So it was only an hour or so before the Weasley Matriarch walked into the sitting room and announced that it was bedtime. Harry accepted this directive with a mixture of angsty disappointment and relief, and hoped that there would be opportunity during the next day for a private chat with his bushy-haired friend.

Travel to individual bedrooms and between bedrooms and baths was closely monitored…if not directly by Molly, then indirectly by her magic (or so it was assumed). Harry was vigilant for any last-minute signals as Hermione gave him a loose hug in the hallway and wished him a good night, which led to even more disappointment when he failed to recognize any.

Unless there was something to be read into the Cheshire-like grin on her face as she picked up Crookshanks, gave him a tight hug, then transferred him into Harry's arms and headed down the hallway to her bedroom.

"Well, okay, then," Harry muttered as he turned and balanced Crookshanks in one arm so that he could open his bedroom door with the other.

The tinkling bell above the door was the first indication that something was off. He cautiously opened the doorway.

"Effing Twins!"

"Language, Harry!"

The-Boy-Who-Was-Pranked looked over his shoulder and glared at a grinning Hermione, who had suspiciously only travelled halfway down the hall.

"Did you have a hand in all this?" he hissed.

"Not me," the Muggleborn witch quipped, as she walked up to Harry and peeked inside his room. "I'm restricted to first-year spells, remember?"

"Did you know about this, then?"

Hermione giggled. "Maybe."

Ron and Bill popped their heads out of their shared bedroom to find out what all the fuss was about. They too walked down towards Harry's bedroom door and glanced inside.

And then they all had a good laugh…all but Harry, that is. He didn't think the joke was very funny.

Fred and George had done what their mum had ordered them to do and removed all of the crates and half-opened boxes of joke-related stuff from their old bedroom. But that task obviously hadn't taken all afternoon to complete, which allowed them to do a little redecorating…borrowing interior design cues from Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop.

Crookshanks jumped from Harry's arms into the bedroom. He landed on peach-colored wall-to-wall shag carpeting, then bounced up onto the lace-trimmed pink duvet that now covered the bed. Harry sighed as his gaze shifted from the half-kneazle to the mass of heart-shaped pillows that were stacked against the headboard.

"Well if Crooks didn't trip anything it's probably safe to go inside, right?" Hermione glibly suggested.

"Unless we're attacked by killer kitsch," Harry replied, as he followed his friend into the room.

It was overwhelming. The walls were painted two shades of pink, and the windows were trimmed with pink polka-dotted drapes. A white bear-skinned rug was spread out in front of a fireplace whose bricks were now dripping in fuscia. Red and pink ribbons were wrapped around the pole that supported Hedwig's roost. Frilly white lace and cherubs and hearts were to be found wherever you looked…unless you were looking at the "Heartthrob Harry Potter" posters that now hung on the walls.

"It's so you, Harry!" Bill quipped, as he walked into the room.

"It's something, alright," the raven-haired wizard replied.

"What's going on?" Molly demanded, as she pushed past Ron and Hermione. She stopped, made one full turn around, then began to laugh.

"Oh, those two…" she said. "Although, this would be perfect for Ginny's room."

"She can have it," Harry muttered. "Plenty of room for her and those two critters of hers."

"That's not a bad idea, actually," offered Bill. "After all, this is the right sort of decor if you want to encourage mating."

The smile disappeared from Molly's face. "No, Ginny will not be moving into this room. I'll have Fred and George back here in the morning to set things straight."

"Tomorrow?" asked Harry. "Could you and Bill change this all back now?"

Molly shook her head. "I'm sorry dear, but their pranks have an annoying tendency to trigger a secondary effect whenever somebody tries to cancel out the magic. It's best if they are…encouraged…to do the work themselves."

"Erm…yeah. Good point," Harry replied. He looked around the room and shuddered.

"Can I sleep downstairs on the sitting room sofa, then?" he asked.

"You'll be fine here, Harry…it's only going to be for the one night," said Molly.

By this point, Fleur had finished her shower and left the bathroom. She wandered into Harry's room and began to giggle. This, of course, drew attention to her…and to the damp clingy bathrobe that she was wearing.

"Okay, then, Fleur's here…so where's Ginny?" Harry asked, shaking his head. "And Arthur? Might as well let everyone enjoy the joke."

"Oh, don't be such a poor sport," said Hermione, frowning at the way that Ron was staring wide-eyed at her new roommate.

"They can see it in the morning," declared a disapproving mother. "Everyone back to your rooms. The show is over."

Ron didn't think so, of course, and had to be literally dragged out of the room by Hermione.

Harry sighed as he watched his friends and adopted family shuffle out of the room. Bill hung back just long enough to whisper a quick comment.

"Hey look at the bright side, Harry."

"Do I have a choice?" he asked. "It's bright everywhere that I look."

"Yes, but…did you notice who also got a close look?"

Harry thought for a moment, then shrugged.

"So there's no ward line across my threshold that keeps girls out," he realized. "Same kind of logic used in Gryffindor Tower."

"You make it sound as if that's a bad thing."

Harry rolled his eyes as he pushed the older wizard out the door.

"Good night, Bill," he said, as he shut the door behind the older wizard.

The-Boy-Who-Was-Pranked groaned as he made his way over to the bed and pulled back the garishly covered duvet. He ran his hand across the pile of heart-shaped pillows, hoping to find one that was more fluffy than frilly. Once his selection was made, Harry climbed onto the bed, slipped his feet under the covers, and pulled them back over his torso as he dropped his head backwards onto the pillow. This gave him his first view of the ceiling. It was (predictably) mirrored.

Harry shook his head and shifted his gaze from his reflection to Crookshanks's reflection further down the length of the bed.

"Good night, Crooks," he said.

"Meow."

"Yeah, you and me both."

"Meow?"

"Oh, relax, Crooks. It was just a joke."

Harry shook his head as he reached over to dim his nightstand light, not really believing that he was beginning to understand Hermione's familiar in the same way that he could converse with Hedwig. He sighed in relief as his head fell back onto the pillow; the darkness was definitely was less distracting. But that only allowed slightly older distractions to push into the front of his mind.

The catalogs.

"Right," he decided during a deep yawn. "Worry about that in the morning."

Harry closed his eyes. It had been such a long and eventful day, and he felt so tired. He was quite certain that he would quickly fall asleep. But pushing the issue of underwear modeling to the side only allowed an even older distraction to rise to the surface.

Harry's eyes shot open as he caught his breath.

"Meow?" asked his curled-up bedmate.

"Sorry, Crooks…just thought of something."

"Purrrrrr…."

"Yes, I do have thoughts occasionally," Harry protested. "Merlin, Crooks, it might just as well be Hermione sharing my bed, the way that you're mimicking her."

"Meow?"

"Never mind," said Harry, as he pulled off the covers, rolled off of the bed, and dropped onto his knees. He thought about groping around in the dark, but then remembered he had just been pranked by the Twins. Harry could only imagine what would happen if he blindly slipped his hand underneath the mattress.

Crookshanks protested when the lights were turned back on and his perch was upended.

Harry shook his head as he peeked underneath. "This will just take a second…" he explained. "Ha!"

"Meow!"

"Sorry Crooks…just found what was making the mattress so lumpy."

It wasn't quite what he expected…instead of a vibrating rubber chicken Harry was now staring at a thin package wrapped in brown paper.

"Hmmm…."

Harry reached for his glasses, which had been sitting on the nightstand, then looked over his shoulder towards the door. Seemingly alone (except, of course, for his feline bedmate), he pulled out his wand and cast a detection spell on the package. He swore quietly when the wrapping paper glowed blue.

"So it's either a prank that will be triggered when I touch it…or a security charm," he mused. Harry knew that pranking the wrapping paper was beyond the first-year spell list, but also knew that Fleur could have easily helped Hermione. He looked around the room, and spotted a wrought-iron poker leaning against the side of the fireplace. Ignoring the heart-shaped handle for a moment, Harry retrieved the poker and used it to slide the wrapped package out from under the mattress, and onto the shag carpeting.

There was a large Muggle post-it note fixed to the top of the package, adding weight to the possibility that this had been Hermione's doing, particularly once Harry noticed that the message left on this note was written in her handwriting with a Muggle felt-tip marker.

"_Were you expecting something that clucks?" _the message read.

Harry rolled his eyes as he lifted the unsecured edge of the note with the fireplace poker. This revealed a small map that had been hand-drawn on the wrapping paper. A closer look at this map revealed two large dots labeled "Little Whinging" and "Weybridge" (which he knew was Hermione's hometown). These dots were connected with marked lines, apparently identifying all of the roads and motor routes one would take if they were to travel from one place to the other.

A snort escaped from Harry's nose as he used the fireplace poker to turn the wrapped package over. He didn't find any seams or bits of cellophane strip to cut through.

"So it's charmed wrapping paper," he mused, turning the package back over. He cast an _Alohamora_ spell on the package. Nothing happened.

"Maybe the map is a clue on how to get inside….?"

Harry touched his wand tip to the dot marked "Little Whinging." Nothing happened. He went through a series of simple commands (e.g. _Open!_) without success. He did the same thing with his wand tip touching Weybridge, and then he traced the route from one place to the other.

Still no success.

The raven-haired wizard thought about sticking to his earlier plan…to wait until the morning to sort things out. But this was a challenge…a challenge that he was wagering Hermione had set for him, and he wasn't about to give up on something like that.

Harry glanced over at Hermione's familiar, who was watching with almost a bemused look on his face.

"So Crookshanks, if this goes bad and I need medical attention…should I crack open the door now, or can you howl loud enough for get help?

"Meow!"

"I'll take that as a yes," Harry replied, as he cautiously reached down and touched the wrapping paper with his bare finger. He sighed in relief when nothing bad happened. But then, having gone through all of his previous steps using a finger tip instead of his wand tip, he sighed in frustration.

"What the devil do I need to do in order to…oh, I am _such _an idiot!"

"Meow."

"You didn't have to agree so readily, you know," Harry informed the half-kneazle. Then he grabbed his wand and touched it against the map.

"I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good."

Harry let out a little cheer as a seam magically grew down the length of the wrapping paper and the two sides opened up like French doors.

Underneath the paper was a mail-order catalog whose cover was labeled _"Fredrick's of West Hollywood."_ A small piece of parchment obscured the rest of the page. The handwritten note read:

_Dear Harry,_

_To help cut down on the back and forth, I decided to give you both catalogs. I'm trusting that you won't abuse my trust. You can keep the lingerie catalog overnight if you think you'll need more than one night to make your selections. But since you're such a thoughtful boy…you will be sure to allow me the same amount of time to mull over your poses, right?_

_Love,_

_Hermione_

Harry's heart rate progressively quickened as he read the note, then jumped when he shifted his attention from the message back down to the catalog. Underneath the store's name was a moving picture of a Muggle manikin…an anatomically correct male manikin, judging from the bulge in the fringed leather thong it was wearing. It was some sort of cowboy-themed costume inspired from the American Wild West…although Harry doubted that real cowboys would ride bare-arsed in their saddles. And you could definitely tell that the manikin's thong was baring its arse by the way that it pranced and spun about, clicking the heels of its cowboy boots, and waving a cowboy hat in its hand.

Wondering if all of the other mail-order outfits were just as silly or just as revealing, Harry reached for the catalog with the intention of flipping through its pages. But he didn't make it past the cover page, as his full attention was drawn to the cover of the second mail-order catalog than had been underneath.

On that cover was a moving picture of his belly-dancing best friend, swaying seductively under the words "_Fredrick's of Salem_." At least Harry assumed it was Hermione…the bushy-haired dancing figure was wearing a veil that covered the bottom half of her face. And as for the dancing girl's bottom…it was only half-covered as well, with a pair of silky harem pants that exposed a bum cleft almost as deep as the cleavage on display with the gauzy cropped top.

"I love magic!" Harry whispered, as he reached down and pressed the heel of his palm against the bulge in his pajama bottoms.

"Meow?"

Harry glanced over at the bed.

"Oh give me a break, Crookshanks. You're a guy, right? And you think she would expect me to act any differently?"

The half-kneazle shook its head, jumped off of the bed, and walked over towards Harry. It stopped in front of the lingerie catalog, looked up at the wizard, then sat down on its cover, blocking his view.

"Meow!"

Harry stared at the half-kneazle in disbelief.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake…so you're in on this scheme to?"

"Meow," the familiar replied, as it reached up and pawed at the catalog held in Harry's hands.

Harry snorted.

"You are one loyal familiar, aren't you?"

"Meow."

The-Boy-Who-Lived got up onto his feet, feeling the need to both stretch his legs and (more importantly) readjust the front of his pants. Once the pressure was relieved he began flipping through the male underwear catalog's pages. The same anonymous manikin served as the model for all of the outfits on display. Harry shook his head as he turned each page…the first few pictures were relatively tame, but things got hotter (and barer) beyond that point.

He was sweating by the time he reached the back cover. The amount of skin that he'd be showing his best friend if the catalog worked as advertised would be huge. Harry flipped back to the inside cover and examined the camera lens that had grown out of the page like the pop-up display in a Muggle children's book. Then he read the instructions…twice.

It seemed straight forward enough. But did he dare to bare?

Harry looked down at Crookshanks and snorted. Hermione lived up to her house's reputation.

He walked over to the nightstand, propped the opened catalog up against the wall, and stepped in front of the lens.

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione was gossiping with the part-Veela as they sat on her bed when Harry's familiar flew through their opened window (although if anyone had challenged her, she would have claimed that she was just practicing her colloquial French).

"Zee moment of truth?" Fleur teased, as the Muggleborn witch quickly untied the brown paper package from the owl's leg.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," Hermione pronounced.

"Maybe more so once you see zee pictures, no?"

"Hush!" hissed Hermione. And then she gasped in delight as she watched Cowboy!Harry wave his hat and shake his bare bum.

"That's my boy!" she exclaimed.

"Your very _big_ boy, no?" Fleur teased, as she glanced over the younger witch's shoulder.

"Not like you didn't already know that after this morning."

"Perhaps."

"You were write about zee scars."

"I told you that he wouldn't care enough to use the magical airbrush."

"He was probably een too much of a rush to send eet off."

"Maybe."

"I still think zat you should have done zee same and not done ze retouching on your scar," said Fleur.

Hermione shook her head. "It's not that I ashamed of it...I just knew that Harry would focus only on the scar and feel guilty."

"Rather zen focus on your breast and feel...'ow do you say eet...'orny?"

"Yes, horny," Hermione agreed. "And yes, I'd rather he be looking at the rest of me." She patted the bed next to her and asked, "Have a seat?"

"Eet ees okay?"

The Muggleborn witch nodded as she opened the catalog.

"Fair is fair…you let me look at this catalog when Bill was still the model."

Fleur smiled. "Shush….eet ees our leetle secret, no?"

"Just like this will be?" asked Hermione, as she flipped past the few pages in order to get to the good stuff.

"No…you should have ze first chance to enjoy ze catalog by yourself."

"Are you sure?"

Fleur nodded. "You can consult wiz me on potential presents een zee morning, no?"

Hermione snorted. "True enough…since Harry decided to hold onto the other catalog overnight."

"I am so 'appy for you, 'Ermione," Fleur gushed, pulling the other witch into a one-armed hug.

"Thanks," the Muggleborn said with a blush. She turned a page and squeezed her thighs together at the sight of Harry wearing nothing more than a smile and sheer black shorts.

"Oh, my!" she hissed.

Fleur giggled at Hermione's reaction.

"Zees catalog…eet's effect ees just as strong as my allure was last night, no?"

Hermione gasped and slammed the catalog shut.

"No!"

"Do I 'ave zee Veela blood een me?"

"Yes," Hermione sighed, understanding the question's underlying premise.

Fleur smiled as she patted the other witch's leg.

"I suspect zat ze other catalog ees 'aving zee same effect on your Harry."

A giggle escaped from Hermione's lips.

"Oh, I know for a fact that it's having the same effect," she declared, as she opened the catalog back up and searched for where she had left off.

"Based on past experience?" Fleur teased.

Hermione shook her head. "Based on the emotions that Crookshanks is broadcasting right now."

"Your familiar ees excited sexually by zee pictures of you?" Fleur asked.

Hermione caught her breath as she considered the question. Then she relaxed and shook her head.

"He's never acted like that before when he's seen me nude," the witch reasoned. "Crooks must be picking up on Harry's emotional state right now."

"But he ees your familiar? 'Ow could he do zat?"

The Muggleborn witch smiled. "Maybe the two of us are somehow bonding with each other's familiars?"

"Eet would be better eef you two bonded with each other first, I zink."

"No argument here," Hermione said coyly, as she looked down at the catalog and flipped another page.

"Merde!" Fleur exclaimed, as a new wave of pheromones assaulted her Veela-enhanced senses.

"Yes, I agree," Hermione replied, using a very sultry tone of voice. She bent the page corner over and declared, "I definitely want to order that one."

"Eet was you zat I was responding to," the French witch stated. She looked towards Harry's familiar, who had been perched the whole time on Hermione's headboard,.

"Did you feel zat as well, 'Edwig?"

"Brek!"

Hermione let out a little gasp. "So she's probably broadcasting back to Harry as well?"

"Ees zat a problem?" asked Fleur.

The Muggleborn witch looked away from the catalog page for a moment, hoping that she could both "listen" to her familiar's broadcast and compose her own thoughts.

The first task made the second task very difficult.

"I'll muddle through somehow," she said slyly.

Fleur laughed brightly, and let out a torrent of French that Hermione could barely follow. The general sentiment was clear enough, though.

"We'll see," the Muggleborn giggled.

"Alors, I will now give you zee alone time for fluffing ze muffin," Fleur teased, as she rose from Hermione's bed, pulled out her wand and transfigured it into a four-poster model with thick curtains.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Isn't it a little late for me to worry about privacy after you monitored the sitting room last night?"

"So you do not wish me to cast ze privacy and silencing charms on your bed?"

The bushy-haired witch shook her head as she reached up to the nearest bedpost and untied the curtain sash.

"I might be up late," she said, waggling her eyebrows. "Wouldn't want to interfere with you having a good night's sleep."

Fleur giggled as she looked up at Hedwig.

"And are you going to allow 'Edwig to broadcast while you...?" she asked.

Hermione snorted as she turned towards Harry's familiar.

"Wouldn't you rather be out on your own hunt for a mate?"

"Brek!" the owl replied, as she launched off of the headboard and flew out the window.

"I guess the broadcasts are over," Hermione quipped.

"Een both directions?" asked Fleur.

Hermione concentrated for a moment, then nodded.

"I think he's fallen asleep."

"Crookshanks?"

"No. Harry."

Fleur giggled.

"Bill usually does too, afterwards," she admitted.

"Oh, that's terrible!" Hermione laughed.

"Yes, eet ees, but I 'ave not finished Bill's training, so zere ees still 'ope."

Hermione rolled her eyes as she pulled the older witch into a hug.

"I think that I am going to enjoy sharing a room with you this summer."

"Me too," Fleur replied, as she kissed each of Hermione's cheeks, stepped away from the bed, and held out her wand.

"Oh, just a second!" said Hermione, as she swung her feet off the bed and stood up.

Fleur grinned from ear-to-ear as she watched her new roommate slip her hand under the mattress and retrieve a rubber chicken.

"Now you 'ave everything?" she asked.

Hermione smiled as she looked down at the adult toy in her hand.

"Not yet," she replied. "But it will do for tonight."

Fleur nodded knowingly as she said good night, then cast the strongest silencing charms that she knew on her roommate's bed curtains.

oo00OO00oo

A/N: In the five month's time between updates for this story, Chem Prof published a story entitled "I Need You". There was a scene in that story where Hermione shops for a ball gown with the help of a manikin that magically adopts her body shape in excruciating (and intimate) detail. I had the similar (and independent) idea of the catalog models before that story was published (even foreshadowed sharing catalogs in a previous chapter), but I want to acknowledge the similarity.


	5. Chapter 5:  Sur La Cote Weasley

**A Boon for Bill  
****a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff**

A/N: Everyone heads out to the beach in August, right? So here's my 14,000 word narrative equivalent. Admittedly indulgent, but it does push the story past one rather important milestone.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

**Canon Question of the day:** So there wasn't anything canon-worthy of note during the couple of weeks before Harry's birthday...other than the fact that the kids played a lot of backyard Quidditch? Not in my world, thank you very much.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 5: Sur la Cote Weasley**

The shrieks and raucous laughter generated during the next morning's therapeutic spell-casting would have awoken most of The Burrow, were it not for Fleur's strong silencing charms. The amount of flesh bared during that same period of time would have aroused most of The Burrow, were it not for locked doors and drawn curtains (there being a 2:1 wizard/witch ratio outside of Percy's old bedroom).

Fleur had been singularly unimpressed with the list of First Year spells offered under the Hogwarts curriculum. When Hermione had asked her to replace Crookshanks as a live target, she had expected to be subjected to jinxes that tickled her or forced her to dance…the kind of spells that she'd learned during her first year at Beauxbatons. But anything that would be fun to hurl towards an opponent was at least a Second Year spell for Hogwarts, and absent from Hermione's approved spell list. There were, of course, spells on that list that did require a live target to judge effectiveness…the tripping jinx, for example, or _Petrificus Totatus_. And Hermione insisted that she do all of those spells, at least once. But Fleur was feeling rather playful that morning, and wanted to fire back.

Hermione was in a very agreeable mood, but was concerned about how her injury would respond to getting clipped by something like a _Expelliarmus_spell. So she improvised, and came up with a rather risque type of practice that involved the color-changing spell.

It was a simple game with simple rules and a simple spell…change the color of a piece of clothing worn by your opponent, and they have to remove it. In practice, however, it proved challenging (particularly once the two witches stripped off their nightgowns and dueled in their knickers).

"It's not….fair!" Hermione giggled, as she dodged yet another spell that was flying towards her crotch.

_"Pingo!"_

Fleur ducked to her left and let Hermione's spell sail by.

"What eez not fair?" she asked.

"Your target is smaller than mine!"

"Would you like to borrow one of my thongs?" Fleur teased.

"No…got my own if…just want to…._Pingo!_...Damn it!….Want to hit the one that you're wearing!"

"Never!" Fleur shouted, as she hurled three successive color-changing charms. Hermione sidestepped the first, then squatted down to avoid the second, only to be clipped on the bum by the third.

"J'ai gagne!" Fleur shouted with glee, as she watched Hermione's knickers change color. She raised her arms into the air and exclaimed, "I see pink!"

Hermione sighed as she reached back and rubbed the slightly stinging point of impact through her (now) pink panties.

"So if you see pink already there's no need for me to take them off?" she asked.

Fleur smiled as she placed her hands on her hips, lifted her chin and shook her head.

"Tout le chemin!"

"Alright, alright," Hermione whined, as she hooked thumbs into her waistband and pulled down her knickers. After stepping out of them she did a slow pirouette and asked, "There…happy?"

"Very," Fleur teased as she "holstered" her wand by slipping it through the waistband of her thong. Then she stepped forward, closing the gap between her roommate and her, and reached out with her finger.

"Eet ees a leetle less discolored today, no?" she asked, lightly touching the top end of Hermione's scar. The Muggleborn witch caught a slight breath in her throat as Fleur's finger began to trace down the length of her wound.

"Erm, yeah, I guess," she replied. "Still think it's too ugly to show Harry, though."

"I disagree," Fleur said, her finger stopping right where the scar met Hermione's cleavage. The part-Veela dragged her fingertip off-course and playfully poked each of her roommate's nipples. "Zis scar would not even be noticed eef these were also on display…or eef zey were tan like mine."

Hermione snorted as she batted Fleur's fingers away from her chest.

"Maybe if it was Ron that was perving on them," she said. "But Harry? He would look straight past my baps and focus only on the scar. And then he'd feel guilty for thinking that it was his fault that I was injured."

"I think zat eet would be a problem only eef you act as eef you are ashamed of 'ow you look," Fleur countered. "And you 'ave no reason to zink zat…you are such a beautiful girl, no?"

Hermione shrugged.

Fleur tried to brighten their mood with a playful suggestion.

"And so, 'Ermione…would you like to keep playing zee game for favors?"

"Play for favors? Why Fleur…that's a rather naughty suggestion!"

The part-Veela shrugged. "Only eef you 'ave zee naughty mind," she said slyly. "Eet would be a big favor eef you kept Ronald from making zee drool on me, no?"

"I suppose," Hermione replied. She then looked down the length of her naked body and asked, "But what would you be aiming to change color if we kept playing?"

Fleur giggled as she pulled her wand out from her waistband and traced a horizontal line just above her roommate's mound.

"Zee spell can change the color of hair just as easily as clothing, no?" she teased. "Une jardin rose…comme Tonks?"

Hermione looked down towards her crotch and batted away Fleur's wand. "Would hardly be fair, though would it? I haven't been able to cast a depilatory charm since the Ministry attack. My pubes are almost as big a target as my knickers."

Fleur giggled.

"Eet ees not a First-Year spell at your school, zen?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Not on any of the spell lists, actually."

"But you are also Muggleborn, no?" Fleur asked. "You do not have a razor?"

The bushy-haired witch shook her head. "Didn't bring one with me…can you imagine explaining what it's used for if Mr. Weasley spotted it in my toiletry bag? And besides…magic doesn't leave stubble."

"Zat ees true," Fleur replied. "You know zat I would be 'appy to cast ze spell for you...maybe you would like ze shape of a lightning bolt?"

"Fleur!" Hermione chided, as she reflexively covered herself with her hands.

The French witch was about to chide her roommate over her modesty, when the escape of a low-pitched growl from Hermione's lips caught her attention.

"Ees something wrong, 'Ermione?"

"Erm…no," the Muggleborn stammered as she turned away from her roommate. "Just that…oooh!...think I'll have to take a break….I'd have…oh, geez….have problems concentrating on much of anything right now."

"Why eez zat?" Fleur asked, as she watched Hermione squirm.

The Muggleborn witch looked towards the locked bedroom door and giggled. "Because Harry is awake and Crookshanks is broadcasting again."

Fleur's eyes widened. "So he eez…what…flipping through zee catalog pages?"

Hermione closed her eyes, and nodded as she bent her clutched knees.

"One-handed, I imagine!" she moaned. "Crookshanks is really going to have to find someplace else to sleep tonight if he keeps transmitting like this."

Fleur laughed in delight and clapped her hands together. "Magnifique! And so…would you like to have some alone time een zee shower, or alone time 'ere while I shower?"

"I'd rather have some alone time with Harry right now!"

"You are sharing a moment with 'im right now, no?"

Hermione snorted.

"Yeah, yeah…very funny," she said, as she hobbled over to her bed and grabbed her bathrobe. "Think that I will take the first shower, if you don't mind."

The part-Veela shrugged as she took down the silencing charms.

"Of course I don't mind…would you like to use zee door opening charm?" she asked. "Eet eez a First-Year spell, no?"

Hermione shook her head as she loosely tied her bathrobe closed.

"Couldn't hold my wand steady right now if I tried," she gasped.

"I guess 'Arry eez not 'olding 'is wand steady either?"

"Anything but," Hermione replied. "Might need you to cast a contraceptive charm on me at this rate."

"Perhaps I should," Fleur teased. "Zey are good for forty-eight 'ours, no?"

"Fleur!"

"Oui?"

"Oh…would you just unlock the door, please?"

"Bien sur!"

Hermione chewed on her lower lip as her new roommate cast an _Alohamora_spell. Once the locking charm was removed she took hold of the door handle…then spun around and leaned back against the bedroom door.

"So Fleur…would you really be willing to…to cast that charm on me?"

The French witch smiled knowingly.

"You are going to go all zee way with 'Arry?"

"No, silly…the _other_one," Hermione whispered, as she pulled open the front of her robes.

Fleur giggled as she walked up to her roommate, dropped down to her knees, and aimed.

"Zee lightning bolt, zen?"

"No!" Hermione hissed.

"Une chat chauvre…like mine?"

Hermione shook her head.

"Not that far," she declared as she put her hands together so that her thumbs and forefingers formed a small triangle. She then reached down and outlined her desired area of effect.

"This much?"

Fleur nodded. "You know zat zis spell tickles a leetle bit, yes?"

"I doubt that I'll feel it, given the way that I'm being tickled right now," said Hermione.

"And zis ees a complaint?" Fleur teased.

Hermione snorted, and shook her head while Fleur cast a grooming charm that every Beauxbatons students was taught in their First Year.

**oo00OO00oo**

Molly had a strong suspicion that something funny was going on behind her back that morning, but couldn't put her finger on exactly who was doing what. Her initial focus was on Bill and Fleur, since the part-Veela was working at Gringott's that day. But there wasn't anything she could really do about what took place beyond the Burrow's wards, so the best she could do was warn the couple about not engaging in any "funny business at the bank" as they took turns stepping through the floo.

Once the Weasley matriarch was down to just having Ron, Ginny, Harry and Hermione under her purview she acted on her lingering suspicions by segregating the sexes. This limited the ability for Hermione and Harry to discuss what had happened the night before to passing glances and a silent exchange of deep blushes. The two girls were kept inside to do the washing and cleaning, while the boys were kicked out into the backyard.

Ron wanted to play Quidditch, but his mum was still enforcing Harry's flying ban, so the two teens were forced into figuring out a semi-satisfactory work-around. Ron unfastened three of the goal hoops from their posts and brought them down to ground level. He then flew back and forth on his broomstick only a few feet off the ground while Harry stood twenty feet away and threw Quaffles towards those hoops. The raven-haired wizard couldn't get near the same velocity on the ball that he might have had he been flying towards the hoops, but it was better than nothing. And, given Ron's skill level and propensity for getting suckered into feints, it was good enough.

After lunch, Molly sat the four teenagers down at the kitchen table and forced them to revise and work on their summer assignments. Ginny spent far more time playing with her Pygmy Puffs than studying, until her Mum threatened to hurl them into the floo towards Fred and George's shop. Ron, who had the most work to do of them all, spent the afternoon sketching out Quidditch plays in the margins of his parchment. Harry spent the afternoon rewriting the essays that he'd completed on Privet Drive, incorporating the edits that Hermione had suggested after her review. And Hermione, having long finished and revised her homework, immersed herself within a book that Bill had given her that chronicled (in exhaustive detail) the history of the Ministry of Magic.

It wasn't until towards tea time that Molly remembered her promise and dragged one of the Twins back to the Burrow to change Harry's bedroom decor into something decidedly less erotic. She held Ginny and Hermione back in the kitchen to help make dinner, and held Ron back after catching him skiving off his homework. She did allow Harry to supervise George's work, though…so that there'd be no further need to redecorate the room. The-Boy-Who-Lived took this opportunity to lay out in some detail how the Twins might support certain Holiday objectives (at least those involving Molly and potions). George was quick to agree, and almost as quick to figure out just how he could help.

The red-haired wizard stopped in the kitchen before leaving the Burrow, and, as he munched on a plate of his mum's biscuits, lamented the fact that there wasn't enough time in the day for Fred and himself to monitor cauldrons within their shop. He then detailed just how much money could be made that summer if there only were a way to subcontract out the work to trustworthy individuals.

Ron made the link between this situation and Ginny's Pygmy Puffs and begged his mum to allow him to have a job over hols just like his sister. He pointed out the fact that brewing didn't involve any "silly wand waving" that would violate laws against under-aged spell casting, and even went so far as to state that he wanted to take NEWT-level potions, now that Snape was no longer teaching that class. Ginny then reminded her mum that her O.W.L. year was coming up, and expressed her desire to get an "O" in potions, just like her mother (and some of her older brothers).

As Molly hemmed and hawed, George tried to seal the deal by noting that somebody would need to be supervising all of this work, and that it would only be fair if the person doing that monitoring was adequately compensated. But it wasn't until he mentioned that his brother and he were working on the development of a potion that provided resistance to the Siren's Song and other types of magical allure that she provided her blessing.

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione couldn't wait to be sent off to bed by Molly that night.

"Oh, Fleur, everything went brilliantly today!" she gushed, once her roommate magically silenced and secured their room.

The part-Veela smiled. "So, you and 'Arry were able to send off zee mail-orders?"

Hermione shook her head. "Not even close," she replied. "Didn't even get the chance to swap back catalogs."

"So you have another night to review your own choices for him behind your bed curtains?" Fleur teased.

"As a matter of fact…"

"I zink zat 'Arry would certainly consider that opportunity brilliant, n'est pas?"

"I suppose so."

"You do not know, though?"

Hermione snorted and shook her head. "I don't right now…Crookshanks has been out all day tomcatting."

"I see…so, what was eet zat made today brilliant, zen?"

"George came through for us," Hermione explained. "He convinced Molly to let us practice our potion making over hols, and brew the neutralizing agents to her love potions right under her nose!"

The Muggleborn witch proceeded to give a detailed accounting of the day as they changed into their nightgowns and took turns brushing out each other's hair, focusing mostly on how Molly was tricked. Fleur was quick to understand why brewing a neutralizing agent for the Siren's Song was what closed the deal for Molly, since such a potion might negate the allure that Molly was convinced the part-Veela had used to ensnare her son. The ill-feelings generated by this response, however, were dwarfed by her over-all amusement with the situation…Harry and Hermione had gotten one over on her future mother-in-law without either of them saying a word. And then there were her own schemes to discuss.

"And so, while you were solving one problem, I was solving anozer," she declared.

"Which one?" Hermione asked.

"Zee one zat will allow you to get zee mail-order knickers past Molly's noze," Fleur replied, as she spread her Gringott's work robes out on top of her bed. A spoken word and the touch of her wand tip to one of the buttons caused the leather-capped fastener to magically expand into a leather-capped, button-shaped box.

"What's this?" asked Hermione, as her roommate pried open the box top.

"A way to smuggle your orders," Fleur declared. "You can have zem sent in care of Bill or me at Gringott's."

"That's a great idea," said Hermione.

"And inside zee box ees a way for you to lessen zee visual impact of your scar," Fleur added.

Intrigued, Hermione reached out and pushed aside the tissue paper that lined the package's interior. Her curiosity was heightened when she then pulled out a black puffed-sleeve wool dress.

"Erm, thanks, Fleur," she said, as she traced a finger along the dress's sailor-style collar. Hermione glanced down at the matching stockings and bloomers that were still in the round box and said, "Now I won't have to borrow one of Ginny's."

Fleur giggled and shook her head. "Eet ees much more like my swim costume zen Ginny's, 'Ermione."

"Really?" the Muggleborn asked. "But your swim costume looks just the same as hers?"

"Eet may look ze same," said Fleur. "But zee fabric ees very different."

"How?"

"Eet ees French-woven," the part-Veela explained. "Eet magically allows zee sun to warm and tan zee skin underneath…did you not notice zis morning zat I 'ave no tan lines?"

Hermione snorted. "Yes, but…I just assumed that you spent some time on a Muggle clothing-optional beach back home."

Fleur shook her head. "Eet would have been nice to have been een France this summer, but zere has been no opportunity."

"Huh," said Hermione, as she held the wool dress up against the light. "This looks and feels just like regular black wool fabric."

"Looks and feels close enough to solid black wool fabric to pass Molly's inspections," Fleur said with a smile.

Hermione giggled. "Oh, Merlin…were you wearing this kind of suit when we went to the pond with Ron and Ginny? If he only knew…does the costume provide any sunscreen protection?"

Fleur nodded. "Zee same level of protection as zee sunscreen potion."

"That's good…I'd worry about missing certain critical spots," Hermione laughed, as she slipped off her nightgown and pulled the conservatively cut knee-length dress over her head.

"Thank you, Fleur," she said, checking her reflection in the mirror. "I was afraid that I might not get any sun this summer."

Fleur smiled. "I said zat your curse scar would not be so noticeable against tanned skin…how else would you be able to do zat 'ere at zee Burrow?"

Hermione giggled. "So does Bill like your all-around tan?"

"Just as much as I like 'is," Fleur quipped.

"What? So his swim costume is made out of the same fabric?"

"Of course!" Fleur giggled, removing the bloomers and stockings from the box. After shrinking it back down to size, she touched a different button and expanded a second hidden compartment. Once it finished growing she opened its cap and pulled out a male Edwardian-area one-piece swim costume.

"Pour votre amant, ma chere soeur," said Fleur.

"For my lover?" Hermione asked, as she dragged her fingers against the male outfit. "Sorry, didn't get much chance to advance on that front today, given Molly's hovering."

"Zis will 'elp you with zee next step, I zink," Fleur replied.

Hermione shrugged. "Next step beyond the catalogs?" she asked. "How would these swim costumes help? Molly seems determined not to let us have any time alone, and it's not like Harry has sun-ray vision, right?"

Fleur giggled as she bent down and pulled two pairs of dark Muggle-style sunglasses out of the second secret box.

Hermione caught her breath. "No way!" she hissed.

Fleur smiled knowingly as she held one of the pairs of sunglasses to her lips and said something in French. She then handed the sunglasses to Hermione. As the Muggleborn witch put them on, Fleur snaked her hand into one of the leg holes of the male swim costume. Once her fingers were hidden underneath the fabric of the suit's crotch, she waved to her roommate.

"_Merde!_" Hermione whispered, watching Fleur's fingers wiggle clearly as if there was nothing in between. This French expletive was repeated a little more forcefully once the Muggleborn witch shifted her gaze to the swim costume that she herself was wearing.

Or not wearing, as far as it appeared through her magical sunglasses.

"Oh my…so…you and Bill each wear these swim costumes _and _these sunglasses to the beach?"

Fleur shrugged. "Eet ees just as you said…as eef William and I were sur la Cote d'Azur."

Hermione was incredulous. "And you think that Harry and I are ready to see each other the same way?"

The French witch nodded as she placed the male swim costume back down on the bed and activated and put on the other pair of magical sunglasses.

"You 'ave already seen each other like zis in zee catalogs, no?"

"_Almost_like this," Hermione protested. "We weren't completely starkers."

"As eef eet mattered, given how transparent some of zee fabrics were?" Fleur chuckled. "Do you doubt zat 'Arry knows just how 'airy you were down zere zis morning?"

"No, but…it's still not the same," Hermione protested, as she pulled on the seemingly invisible wool fabric that was covering her chest, and lifted up the sunglasses to confirm the magical effect. "We were looking at pictures of each other, and it was our images that were wearing those outfits, not us. This wouldn't be the next step…it would be the next giant-sized leap!"

Fleur shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Do these X-ray glasses see through all swim costumes, or just these special ones?" Hermione asked.

"Just zees ones," Fleur replied. "Would you wish to see through someone else's swim costume? Ronald's perhaps?"

"Oh, hell no," Hermione hissed. "So are the sunglasses keyed to seeing through only certain swim costumes, or any costume that's made with this special weave?"

"Zey work on any of zem," Fleur replied.

"So…Harry would be able to see through your swim costume?"

The French witch nodded. "Just as I would see through 'is, and you would be able to see through Bill's and Bill would see through yours…as eef we all were sur la plage, n'est pas?"

"I don't know…"

"Are you worried about your 'Arry?" Fleur asked. "You are forgetting how many times he polished 'is wand last night as he flipped zee pages?"

Hermione snorted. "No, but why do you think that he would pay any attention to my body if you were lying starkers next to me?"

"Because 'e 'as feelings for you, and not for me," Fleur replied. "Eet ees as simple as zat."

"But you're so beautiful," Hermione whined. "And you've got perfect breasts, and a gorgeous bum…"

Fleur giggled as she took hold of Hermione's shoulders and spun her around to face the full-length mirror.

"You are also a beautiful young woman, 'Ermione," Fleur purred, her lips only a few inches away from the Muggleborn's ear. Hermione caught her breath when her roommate snaked her arms around and pulled her back into a hug; while she could feel Fleur's hands resting against the outside of her swim costume, it looked in the mirror (and through their sunglasses) as if the French witch's fingers were groping naked flesh.

"I'm just not sure that I'm ready to go this far," Hermione whispered, as she looked down the length of the mirror. Her gaze stopped at the sight of her knickers.

"Fleur?"

"Yes?"

"What about the rest of the costume? Are the bloomers and stockings made from the same fabric?"

Fleur smiled as she released her hug, walked over to her bed, and retrieved the bloomers.

"See for yourself?" she asked.

Hermione worried her lower lip with her teeth as she took the offered garment, opened up the waistband, then bent down so that she could slip them on.

Fleur reached out and grabbed her roommate's arm. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Seeing for myself?"

"Do you wear knickers underneath your swim costumes?"

"Well, no, of course, not, but…"

"Right now eet ees just us girls, no?" Fleur asked.

"Yeah, right now…"

"Just try it…for me?"

Hermione looked over her shoulder towards the door.

"You did cast that locking charm, right?"

"Of course."

The Muggleborn sighed, and let the bloomers drop to the floor. Then she reached up under the wool swim dress and pulled down her white lace knickers. She stood, checked the mirror, and confirmed the full-Monty effect of the dress and sunglasses. Then she bent down, pulled the bloomers up underneath her dress, and rechecked the view.

She looked just as bare-arsed (and bare-fannied) as before.

"I can't let Harry see me like this…let him see all of me!" she declared.

"Even eef you would be seeing him zee same way?" Fleur asked.

Hemione shook her head.

"Too much, too fast," she decided.

Fleur nodded. "Well, zen…eet ees a good thing zat zese glasses are not strong enough to counter Molly's magic, no?"

"What do you mean?"

The French witch released Hermione from her hug, took a couple of steps backwards, and cast a spell that hit the Muggleborn witch right in the back.

Hermione jumped in surprise and spun around to face Fleur. But then, recognizing the charm that had been cast, she glanced back over her shoulder towards the free-standing mirror. She smiled at the sight of some well-focused magic.

"Now this…this might be just fast enough," she said, turning around to confirm the spell's full effect.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry groaned with disappointment when, early the next morning, his familiar woke him with a gentle nip to the ear.

"Back already, Hedwig?" he whined, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Damn, and I was going take one last look through that catalog before breakfast."

Hedwig gave her master an unblinking stare.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I know…it's far too late for me to start worrying about being modest around you."

"Bark?"

"Because I don't want Hermione to know that I'm perving on her pictures again!" Harry whispered.

"Bark, bark."

"Of course I trust you, girl," Harry replied. "But if I was able to pick up on Hermione's emotions when Crookshanks was here, it makes sense that she might be able to pick up on mine through you, right?"

"Bark!"

"I know that she knows what I was doing…and she has to know that I know what she was doing with that rubber chicken, but still…"

"Bark!"

"I would if I could…but Molly or Ginny won't leave us alone for a minute!"

Hedwig stared at Harry, then shook her head and flew over to her perch. She then ended the conversation with a few clucking noises before ducking her head underneath a wing.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I appreciate the offer, girl, but even if you can't see me, you still can pick up on my feelings…at least from that distance…"

The messy-haired teen mulled over that last observation, then pulled the covers off of his legs and slipped out of bed. He smiled when his feet sank into the wall-to-wall chocolate brown carpeting, and he took a moment to look around the room. George's interior decorating had been surprisingly tasteful under Harry's watchful eye. The garish pinks and reds had been replaced with warm, earthy colors, and all of the tacky chintz and silk swapped out with brown leather and linen. It was easily the nicest, most welcoming bedroom that Harry had ever slept in…and it was all his for the summer. Unless, of course, Molly did another bedroom reassignment.

The thought of him having control of who slept where, and whom he might want to share his bedroom room with, brought him back to the fantasies and plans that he'd woken with. He stepped lightly over to his bedroom door, opened it, and stuck his head out into the hallway.

"Good, the shower is free," he muttered to himself. Pulling his head back into the bedroom, he grabbed his lavatory kit, then glanced over towards a well-guarded hiding place. He decided that it was not worth the risk of taking the lingerie catalog with him into the bathroom. He then thought a few moments about his extensive review of that catalog the night previous, and decided that he really didn't need it anymore.

The clear image in his mind of "Dryad Hermione," dressed only in green-tinted gauze and a few small oak leaves, would provide more than enough inspiration that morning…and do so just outside of his familiar's emotional reception area.

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione completed her morning spell regimen just a few minutes after Harry finished showering. It was a good workout…the Muggleborn had displayed enough foresight to wear one of her thongs, giving Fleur a target that was just as small as her own during the color-changing rematch. It was Hermione's turn to have the winning shot, and she gloated mercilessly as the French witch stripped bare. Fleur had wanted to keep playing, going so far as to proactively grow a platinum-blonde target using a hair-lengthening charm. But Hermione had other things in mind (or, more specifically, other bits in mind). So she dashed off down the hallway, and quickly finished her shower (as well as herself).

The first thing that Hermione spotted when she walked downstairs and entered the kitchen was Harry, feeding Hedwig a rasher of bacon. She blushed when they made eye contact…while Harry was dressed in his usual summer-weight robes, her mind instantly transfigured those robes into the barely-there Roman toga that he wore on page 38 of the catalog. At the same time, Harry was busy mentally replacing her modest robes with the lei and grass skirt that her image wore on page 16 of the other catalog.

Hedwig rebroadcast the waves of intense emotions that she picked up from the two teens just as quickly as they came in...Initially lustful, but morphing quickly into mutual embarrassment as Harry and Hermione realized what they were unintentionally sharing with each other (and also realized that they were sharing them while Ron was sitting at the kitchen table) The majestic owl twisted her head around so that she could face each of the teenagers and bark out her amusement at their antics. Then she launched herself from Harry's shoulder and flew out an opened window.

"Where's she going, Mate?" asked Ron.

"Probably out for a hunt," said Harry, as he glanced down and readjusted the front of his robes.

"Doesn't she search for food at night?"

"Different kinds of hunts," the Muggleborn witch replied, as she took a seat across from Ron and struggled to control her blush.

Harry snickered, and shook his head. "Think her search might be a little more energetic today, Hermione?"

His best friend nodded, avoiding eye contact as she focused on filling her plate. "Have you seen Crookshanks this morning, Harry?"

The-Boy-Who-Lived shook his head and smiled.

"He was out all night. Going to give him a stern lecture after he does his walk of shame?"

Hermione snorted, and shook her head. "Can't blame him for being any less energetic than Hedwig, right?"

Ron shook his head in between large infusions of porridge.

"I wonder why Pig never has that kind of energy," he wondered.

"Yeah, especially since he's your familiar," Hermione quipped, risking a glance up at Harry so that they could share knowing smiles.

Ginny emerged from the stairwell with a smile on her face and a Pygmy Puff on each shoulder.

"Good morning, everyone," she said brightly, sitting down next to Hermione.

"Speaking of energetic pets," said Harry, "Did those two make a love connection last night?"

Ginny shrugged her fluffy-mounted shoulders. "I'm not sure," she replied. "They spent the night hugging each other…if they weren't different colors you couldn't have known where one stopped and the other started."

Harry chuckled. "Sounds like they were connected alright…so do the cigars get passed out two weeks from now?"

The youngest Weasley wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "I think that they were just cuddling."

"How could you tell?" Hermione asked.

"Because every time I checked there was pink fur on top of purple," Ginny explained.

"So?" asked Ron.

His sister rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Ronald,"

"Hey, that's my line," Hermione quipped.

"Do I really have to explain the birds and bees to my older brother?" Ginny asked. "Everyone knows that if they _were_making babies, then the boy would have been lying on top of the girl."

Harry and Hermione both snorted in amusement. Molly chose that moment to come in the back door, cradling a dozen eggs in her apron.

"Ginevra Weasley, I shouldn't have to be the one collecting eggs for breakfast."

"Yes, Mum."

"If you can't keep on top of your chores, then…"

"Yes, Mum…sorry, Mum."

Molly would have continued to harangue her daughter, had her oldest son not chosen to enter the kitchen at that very moment with a box under one arm and his fiancee under the other.

"Morning, everyone," Bill announced.

"It is a good morning, isn't it?" asked Hermione, as she caught her roommate's eyes and smiled.

Molly didn't agree.

"Shove down, Ronald…Bill needs to eat breakfast now or he'll be late for work."

"Alright."

"Thanks, little brother," Bill said, as he let go of Fleur's hand and stepped around the table. Before taking a seat he held the box out towards Harry and said, "Oh, before I forget…this is for you."

"Erm…thanks," Harry said with a bit of surprise.

"It was going to be a birthday present from the both of us," the curse-breaker explained. "But Fleur thought it might come in handy beforehand."

With nearly everyone watching Harry open the box, nobody saw Bill give Hermione a rakish wink. Except Hermione, of course.

"Hey, look…it's a swim costume," Harry said, as he pulled the wool one-piece suit out of the box.

Ginny's eyes danced with delight as she asked, "Model it for us, Harry?"

The-Boy-Who-Lived chuckled as he pushed back from the table and stood up.

"What do you think?" he asked, holding up the suit that completely covered him from neck to knees.

"Ooh la la…tres sexy, 'Arry," Fleur teased.

Molly was already making her way towards Harry before this comment was made.

"Let's have a look, then," she demanded, reaching out to measure the thickness of the fabric in between her fingers.

"We didn't think that you'd have a Wizard-style swim costume," Bill explained. "What with the one you wore for the Tri-Wizard Tournament still hanging inside the Hogwarts trophy case."

"Hey Fleur, is that the same reason why you don't wear that silver swim costume?" asked Ron, while Molly held Harry's new suit up to the window.

Molly huffed loudly, then declared, "She doesn't wear that costume, Ronald, because it's scandalous and completely inappropriate…at least as long as she is staying at the Burrow."

Harry snorted. "Well, thanks Bill…and Fleur…you were right about me not having one of these suits packed."

"You are very welcome, 'Arry, I think zat you will look quite handsome in that costume," Fleur replied, as she casually placed her hand on Hermione's shoulder and gave it a playful squeeze. "Don't you agree, 'Ermione?"

"Erm…yeah…I can't wait to see you wearing it," Hermione said, waggling her eyebrows.

"So are we going to the beach, then?" Harry asked.

Ginny snorted. "Don't have to go anywhere…we've been swimming in our pond ."

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Your pond?" he asked. "You mean that little green puddle just out past the apple trees?"

Ron nodded. "With Fleur's help it cleans up brilliantly, Mate…you'll see."

"Erm..okay, then."

Ginny loudly asked, "So can we go swimming, Mum?"

Molly looked out the window and rolled her eyes.

The answer was a definite no…at least as long as it was raining. And even if it had been a sunny morning, there were potion ingredients to prep and cauldrons to stir. Once Bill and Arthur left for work, the five teenagers were put to work under Molly's watchful eye. They sliced, and diced, and made julienne-style newt's eyes the entire day. Ginny kept asking her mum if they could swim, but the rain didn't let up, providing Molly with an easy excuse to keep the five teenagers inside the house and under her eye.

Hermione couldn't decide whether she was more disappointed or relieved that they didn't have an opportunity to sunbathe that day. It might have been easier if she could get a few minutes alone with Harry to talk about things, but Molly's hovering and Ginny and Ron's near constant presence made that impossible.

Harry's invisibility cloak wasn't even an option for them…someone had told Molly about it (presumably Dumbledore), and she had demanded that Harry give the garment up for the Order's use along the ward line. The raven-haired wizard was very reluctant to lend out the heirloom, and absolutely refused to let certain Order members get their hands on it (specifically, Snape and Dung). At the same time, he knew it worked far better than the cloaks that the Order members were using, and he felt some responsibility for there being constant guards along the ward line. So he reluctantly handed it over to Arthur and Molly, on the condition that he have final say on who got to wear it, and when. The Weasley Matriarch didn't like having terms dictated to her, but her husband was quick to acknowledge (and accept) Harry's concerns. It helped that the terms were easily met…there was always more than one guard on the ward line, and Snape and Fletcher never worked together.

Molly's hovering did give Harry and Hermione one more night to review their mail-order selections, although they were beginning to worry about their respective hiding places. Bill and Fleur solved that particular problem on the following morning, when they surreptitiously volunteered for courier duty. Both were working at Gringott's that day, so Fleur used the hidden buttons on her work robes to smuggle one catalog out of Hermione's bedroom, while Bill slipped into Harry's bedroom and (after a fifteen minute discussion) did the same. Once at Gringott's the two exchanged packages, and delivered them back to the two teens for their review and approval. They could then be sent out either by Hedwig or (if that was considered too risky), smuggled out in the same manner and sent from Diagon Alley.

While there wasn't a cloud in the sky that morning, the teenagers didn't bother to ask Molly if they could go swimming; Fleur was at Gringott's all day, and it was only her magic bag that could make the outing viable. So they spent another morning in the kitchen working on potions, then enjoyed another gender-segregated afternoon…boys outside, girls inside. Hermione would have been much more upset had she not been anticipating a smuggled delivery that night.

She practically ripped the button from Fleur's robes once they had "retired" for the evening. The French witch was understanding, and quickly liberated the package.

Hermione said, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," (not caring or noticing that Fleur was standing by her side) and ripped the wrapping paper off of the catalog.

"Where did I go?" Hermione asked, once she got a good look at the cover. She turned it towards Fleur and showed her the image of a faceless manikin dressed in a harem outfit.

"'Arry must have cleared all of the images," Fleur reasoned. "Een case someone else intercepted zee package?"

"Oh…I guess that makes sense," Hermione replied. "So how can I see how I'd look in the outfits that he picked out for me?"

Fleur rolled her eyes as she took the catalog from Hermione.

"By posing for anozer picture, silly!" the French witch teased.

A folded letter fell out when she opened the catalog's cover page and aimed the magical camera towards her roommate. Hermione caught the paper in mid-air and unfolded it. It was blank…at least until she repeated the Marauder's Oath.

"You were right about him clearing the image," Hermione told Fleur, as she read the first sentence. Then she swore.

"What eez wrong?"

"Listen to this," Hermione replied. "He said, '_I really needed to ask Bill for his advice on what to pick, and I couldn't even imagine how embarrassed and angry you would be if I showed pictures of you dressed that way to another man'_."

"Your boyfriend is so thoughtful," Fleur teased.

"He's not my boyfriend, though," said Hermione. "And probably won't be now…what will I do if he finds out that I showed you a couple of _his_pictures?"

Fleur shrugged. "Eef he asks, you can zay zhat I snuck zee peeks over your shoulders. And tell him zat you saw zee same pictures of Bill."

Hermione sighed. "But this is about Harry trusting me…you showing me the catalog pics of Bill dressed in a thong has nothing to do with it."

Fleur smiled. "So you will apologize to 'Arry, and I will apologize to Bill, zen we will both say we are naughty girls who deserve zee spankings?"

A loud snort escaped from Hermione's lips as she shifted her gaze back towards the letter.

"Aww…that's so sweet!" she said, a few moments later.

"What?"

"He said that he didn't know if he should make selections based on our current relationship, or where that relationship might be if Molly and Ginny weren't meddling so much. So he decided to mark the catalog with two different colors of ink. Black check marks next to outfits for his best friend in the world, and red check marks next to outfits that he'd like to see a future lover wearing."

"He ees zinking zat those might be different women?" Fleur asked.

Hermione shook her head. "He's just being careful, I think…here, he goes on to apologize for the fact that he couldn't think of anyone other than me being his future lover so long as I was modeling the outfits."

"Zat ees fantastique, no?" Fleur gushed, pulling Hermione into a hug.

Her Muggleborn roommate smiled, and nodded in agreement as she finished reading the letter.

"Oh, Harry!" Hermione whispered, holding the letter against her chest. She then said, "Mischief Managed," and turned the page blank again.

"What did 'e say after zat?" Fleur asked impatiently.

Hermione smiled, and shook her head. "I can't tell you everything…can I?"

Fleur waggled her eyebrows. "Of course you can!"

"We'll I'm not…at least not for now."

"Fair enough," Fleur decided. Then she held the inside page of the catalog in front of her roommate and asked, "Tout le chemin?"

Hermione giggled, and nodded in agreement as she slipped off her clothes. A wide grin formed on the French witch's face as she activated the catalog camera.

"So are you now zinking of 'Arry as your lover?" she asked.

"What makes you think that?"

Fleur smiled as she handed the catalog back to her nude roommate.

"Because you 'ave zee witches teets, and I 'ave zee Veela nose?" she quipped.

Hermione looked down and shook her head in frustration.

"I'm also going to have closed bed curtains if you don't behave," she said, taking the few seconds time necessary to cover the visible signs of her excitement with her nightgown. Not that the thin fabric did any good as she began to flip through the pages.

"'Arry has excellent taste…for both 'is best friend and 'is bed friend," Fleur declared, as they both studied the pictures. On facing pages, checks were placed where Hermione was wearing a classic white silk slip on one side, and where she sported a semi-transparent red silk teddy on the other.

"Ooh, la, la!" Fleur squealed, as she caught sight of some of Harry's more daring selections.

Hermione couldn't help but to agree…and to smile…and to squeeze her knees together as she reviewed the same pictures. She was still too proper to exclaim, "Ooh, la _fucking_ la!" out loud (even with just Fleur present) but that phrase was certainly dancing inside her head.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry had assured Hermione within his letter that Bill had assured him that there were more than enough galleons in his vault to purchase three of every outfit in the lingerie catalog. He also asked that she not worry about the aggregate cost. He even asked her to pick out a few outfits on her own, so as to surprise him, promising that he intended to do the same. Hermione still worried a little about the cost, until Fleur independently confirmed his wealth, and pointed out that purchasing outfits for her could be the same as a birthday present for him…so long as Hermione gave him a live model review of what he had lusted over in the catalog.

It wasn't a hard sell.

Bill left for work the next morning with a knowing grin on his face and two separate mail order forms hidden within his buttons. It was a partly cloudy day, and Fleur had neither work nor guard duty on her schedule. Ginny could hardly wait for breakfast to end before asking,

"Can we go swimming _now_, Mum?"

The Weasley matriarch looked at the teenagers sitting at the kitchen table, then looked down at the family clock that she was cradling in the crook of her right arm. While nothing had changed since the last time that she'd looked (some forty-five seconds previous), it gave her a bit of time for her to consider a response.

"The potions won't brew themselves, you know," she declared. "Maybe after lunch."

Fortunately, the weather held.

"Can we go swimming _now_, Mum?"

"I don't know," Molly replied. "The pond is rather close to the property line…"

"No closer than it was a couple of days ago when you let us go," noted Ginny.

"But Harry wasn't here a couple of days ago, either."

"Even more reason to go today," Ginny said stridently.

Hermione had to stifle a laugh when she spotted the obvious non-verbals that the red-haired teen was trying to send her mother.

"And we'd have a guard there too, Mum," Ron noted.

"You can't expect the Order to spend all of their time patrolling next to the pond, Ronald."

"They wouldn't have to…Fleur is in the Order, and she will be with us!"

"Be with you where, Ronald?" the part-Veela asked, as she walked into the kitchen.

"Now that the sun is out, Ginny wants to show Harry the pond," he explained.

"I know what she really wants to show Harry," Hermione muttered under her breath.

"And you wish me to accompany you?" Fleur asked with a smile. "As a guard, or in my swim costume?"

Ron blushed. "You could guard in your swim costume, couldn't you? And bring your beach bag?"

Molly let out a deep sigh.

"Ronald, you can't expect houseguests to jump at your command," she chided.

"Yeah, that would be honing in on her job," Hermione whispered to Harry.

"Hush," he replied.

Fleur's smiled. "Eet eez no problem, Molly," she declared. "I would be happy to refashion _La Cote Weasley_."

The matriarch frowned.

"I expect that you'll go no further than the pond, and will follow the swimming rules and will not wear any scandalous attire," she stated firmly. "Any of you!"

"Bien sur, Molly," the blonde-haired witch replied brightly. She grabbed Hermione by the hand and dragged her up the stairs so that they could change. The other three teenagers were quick to follow.

**oo00OO00oo**

"Hold it right there, young lady!" Molly ordered, just a few minutes later.

Ginny reluctantly stopped short of the backdoor that she was trying to slip out of unnoticed.

"Oh, Mum…" she whined.

"Don't you _'Oh, Mum,' _me, Missy," the Weasley matron bellowed, as she drew her wand from an apron pocket. "You know the rules."

Ginny sighed as she turned to face her mother and began to unbutton her lightweight robes. The young teen waited until Molly had made her way over towards the door before she ripped them open.

"There….happy?" Ginny demanded.

"Harry might be," Ron muttered, as he emerged from the stairwell.

"Don't be crude, Ronald," Hermione said, as she followed him into the kitchen. Harry and Fleur were right behind, with Harry carrying Fleur's large, brightly-colored beach bag on his shoulder.

Molly was focused solely on her daughter, and scowled as she looked up and down the front of Ginny's Edwardian-era swim costume. The black, puffed-sleeve wool dress stretched down to the girl's knees. Those knees (and the rest of her legs) were covered by a pair of thick wool stockings that were accessorized by lace-up bathing slippers. Mrs. Weasley reached out and lifted the hem of the wool dress just high enough to confirm that her daughter was wearing proper bloomers underneath.

"Can I go now, Mother?" Ginny whined.

Molly shook her head as she stepped back far enough to provide clearance for the wand movements required for her intended magic.

_"Praetego!"_

Once the spell was cast, Molly reached out and tugged at the neckline of her daughter's costume. She smiled when she found the right amount of resistance within the fabric.

"Now you can go," the Weasley Matron declared. "Have your hat, then?"

Ginny rolled her eyes as she pulled a ribbon-trimmed black wool shower cap half-way out of her robe pocket.

"Yes, Mum," she sighed.

Molly smiled, and wished her daughter a fun afternoon as she moved down the line to inspect Ron's swim costume. It looked nearly identical to Harry's, save for the color (navy blue versus black). When Ron's mum cast the same spell on him that she'd cast on his sister, Harry leaned towards Hermione and whispered into her ear.

"Is she casting shield charms on everyone, then?" he asked.

Hermione let out a quiet snort. She shook her head, smiled, and turned so that she could whisper her reply into Harry's ear.

"The spell is _Praetego_, silly….not _Protego_. Although I guess the intent is almost the same."

"What's the…"

Hermione stopped Harry's follow-up question with a curt shake of her head and the mouthed promise of, _"Later."_He nodded, and quietly waited for his turn to be inspected, bespelled, and sent out the door.

An explanation came sooner than Harry expected, and from a different source. Ron was waiting just outside the back door of the house, and held his best mate back from the girls as they all began walking out towards the pond.

"So…feel a little tingly in the danglies?" Ron snarked.

"What?"

"Thespell that Mum cast on us."

Harry winced. "Sorry Mate, but do you really want to talk about a spell cast by your mother that made your bits tingly?"

"Erm, right…never mind."

"I certainly plan to."

Ron snorted. "Still, though…it's not all bad."

"What's not all bad?"

"The spell."

"This sticking charm that is keeping me from stripping off my suit?"

"No…I mean, yes, it does do that," Ron admitted.

"Is it something that Fleur can cancel once we get to the pond?"

The red-haired teen shook his head. "Sorry, Mate…it can only be cancelled by the spell caster."

"Why did she…does she expect us to strip down starkers and go skinny-dipping, or something?"

"No, no…nothing like that," Ron replied. "More like she wants to make sure that we don't change into Muggle swim costumes…or adjust the ones that we're wearing."

"So what if we have to go?"

"Go where?" asked Ron.

"To the loo, you berk!" Harry replied, a bit more forcefully than he had intended.

The girls thought the question was rather funny, judging by the giggling that Harry heard coming from their position up the path. Ron thought that the question was more silly than funny.

"You like to squat in the bushes or something?" he asked.

"Of course not."

"Then what's the problem?" asked Ron. "Not like Mum is going anywhere if you need run back to the house to pinch off a few logs."

Harry rolled his eyes, knowing that the pleased look on his friend's face had more to do with the fact that he'd gotten away with making a coarse comment than anything else.

"But what if I just have to pee?" Harry whispered. "Do I have to run back to the house for that, too?"

"Course not," Ron scoffed. "We're going to the pond, remember?"

"And…?"

"And the water is chest deep near the center?"

Harry stopped short and stared at his best male friend. Ron took a few more steps before he realized, and looked back over his shoulder.

"What?" he asked defensively.

The-Boy-Who-Lived shook his head. "So I shouldn't expect a sign nailed to a tree by the water's edge that says _'Don't pee in our pond'_?"

"Erm…..no?"

Harry shook his head. "And do the girls know about this?"

Ron shrugged. "What they don't know, won't hurt them, right? And who's to say that they aren't doing the same thing?"

"I think I might just stay out of the water this afternoon," Harry said.

"You are such a prissy git," Ron scoffed. "It's not like I rub off in the pond…although I guess they'd never know, would they?"

"What do you mean?"

"That spell Mum cast," Ron explained. "It's more than just a sticking charm…keeps your bits from being noticed as well."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"What's the point, though?" Harry asked. "We're already covered head to knee or head to toe with thick wool swim costumes that won't come off."

"The point is the points," Ron quipped, laughing at his own joke. "The swim costume fabric is thick, but not thick enough to hide the perky nipples that the girls get when the water is cold, or keep us from seeing when the backs of their bloomers get stuck up their bum cracks."

"So it's a concealing spell too?"

"That's right," Ron replied. "Can't see nipple bumps…or arse cracks…or any other kinds of cracks…rather disappointing, actually…were it not for the fact that it also hides stiffies."

"Really?"

"Absolutely," Ron declared. "A bloke can lie there by the pond with his tent pitched right in front of a girls's face, and she won't even notice."

"Sounds like you speak from experience."

"Not as far as they know," Ron said with a laugh.

"As if they would notice your pup tent without the spell?" Harry snarked.

Ron rolled his eyes. "Ha, ha…very funny, mate…do I have to worry about you noticing the size of my tent, then?"

"Apparently not, so long as your mum's spell is working."

Ron chuckled. "I should have kept my mouth shut, and let you get all worried about hiding your tiny tent."

"Is it really a problem?" Harry asked. "I mean, between the swim costumes and that spell, what's left to perv on?"

"Are you kidding me?" Ron hissed. "Lying there next to them on the sand…knowing that there's nothing underneath their costumes but bare skin…and standing next to them in the water, hoping that the next wave crashes down and throws them on top of you…"

"Waves?" asked Harry.

"Yeah…waves," Ron gushed. "I've got dibs standing behind Fleur, okay?"

"Erm…okay," Harry replied skeptically.

Harry's belief that Molly's spell casting had muddled Ron's mind just as much it muddled any kind of naughty views was strengthened when the two teen-aged wizards reached the edge of the orchard and walked out into a small grassy meadow. Fleur, Hermione and Ginny were already at the far end, standing at the edge of what only the most charitable person (or most myopic) might call a "pond." The oversized puddle was barely twenty feet in diameter, and was completely covered with a thick layer of pistachio-green algae.

"Hurry up, Harry," Hermione called out. "We need that bag!"

The-Boy-Who-Lived snorted as he looked down at the canvas tote that he'd offered to carry for Fleur.

"Yeah, come on, Mate!" Ron urged, as he ran towards the other teens.

"Okay, then," said Harry, as he trotted behind his friend.

"Oh, ye of little faith," Hermione chided, once the two boys reached the pond's edge.

"It smells almost as bad as it looks," Harry noted, handing the beach bag over to Fleur.

"Not for too much longer," she promised, as she set the bag on the ground and spread the handles out wide. The first thing she pulled out of the bag was a Muggle bath toy.

"Oh…can I do it this time?" Ron asked.

Fleur smiled as she tossed the yellow rubber ducky towards the red-haired wizard. He caught it, then turned and gave the toy a toss of his own, straight into the middle of the goopy-green slime. Ron then shocked Harry by clearing his throat and breaking out into song.

_"Rubber ducky, you're the one…you make bath time lots of fun..."_

The musical incantation activated both the floating toy and its imbued magic. The yellow duck began to quack and swim around the pond, leaving a wide path of clear, pure water in its wake.

"It'll only take a minute or two for him to completely clean up the water," Hermione informed Harry.

"Who thought that charm up?" he asked.

Hermione shrugged. "Some Yank Muggleborn, I imagine."

While Harry was getting this explanation, Fleur pulled a full-sized beach umbrella out of the bag, Mary Poppins-style.

"Mind your feet, Harry," Ginny called out, as she helped the French witch push the pointed edge of the pole into the ground. They took a few steps backwards, seeing if the umbrella would stand up on its own. Once this was confirmed, they took a few more steps backwards so that Fleur could shout out a French activation phrase from a safe distance.

The umbrella responded to the magical command by slowly opening up. As the edges of the umbrella pulled away from its wood pole and spread out, pure white beach sand began pouring out. By the time the umbrella was fully opened, the shower of silica was so thick that you couldn't see through it. The sand piled up until it was two-foot thick, than began to spread out laterally. It kept spreading until a beach had formed that was a hundred yards long and fifty feet wide.

"Impressive," Harry declared.

"Not done yet, Mate," said Ron, as Fleur pulled two rune-covered wooded stakes out of the bag. The stakes were connected to each other by a thick length of blue twine. Ginny grabbed one stake, while Ron grabbed the other. They ran side-by-side to the edge of the almost-cleared water, and then separated…Ron running parallel to the beach to the left, as Ginny ran parallel to the beach to the right. They kept going until the twine was all played out, then stretched the rope taut so that it crossed over the small watering hole.

Once they planted the stakes into the ground, Fleur walked up to the nearest section of string, placed her wand tip on it, and muttered an incantation. The string began to glow, then dropped down towards the ground (or water), where it appeared to dissolve away. But then the surface of the pond began forming ripples where the string had disappeared. These ripples grew in size until they became small waves, and the waves began to ebb and flow towards the beach. As the waves grew higher they appeared to grow wider…pushing laterally out over the edges of the pond. The waves kept spreading until they formed a shoreline down the entire length of beach.

"Can we get big ones this time?" Ron yelled.

Fleur smiled and nodded her head. She raised her hands out and shouted something in French. The waves responded by growing in amplitude, until there were almost head-high white.

Harry and Hermione were so engrossed in the magic that neither realized that Ron and Ginny had left them unsupervised…at least not until the brother and sister had run back to their sides.

"Damn!" Hermione muttered.

"Language," Harry teased.

"What's wrong?" asked Ron.

"Erm…nothing," Hermione quickly replied. "I was just so impressed by what's been created."

"Unbelievable!" Harry exclaimed, ignoring the two Weasleys.

Fleur smiled as she picked up her beach bag and dragged it back away from the surf zone.

"Zee waves are an illusion out beyond zee edges of zee pond," she told Harry. "Zee magic will try to keep you within zee real water, but…you should watch where you wish to dive, just zee same."

Harry nodded in understanding as turned back to face the waves. A slight breeze had come up (or at least seemed to have come up), and brought with it the smell of the sea.

"I've never seen this before," Harry whispered.

"Yeah, it's brilliant magic, isn't it?" said Ron, as he shrugged off his robes and dug his toes down into the wet sand.

"No, I mean…I've never seen _this_before," Harry said, as he waved his arm out in front of him.

"Never seen a beach?" asked Ginny.

"Never," Harry whispered.

"But…we live on an island," the red-haired witch declared.

Harry nodded. "I also live with my Aunt and Uncle."

Hermione didn't need any more of an explanation.

"Can I help you make up for lost time?" she asked, as she unfastened her robes.  
Harry turned towards Hermione, and gave her a wide smile.

"I'd like that," he replied, before stripping down to his own modest swim costume.

Hermione grabbed him by the hand, then squealed when he threw her up over his shoulder, and carried her into the water.

They splashed each other, and dunked each other, and "accidentally" allowed the waves to carry them into (and occasionally on top of) each other for the next forty-five minutes. Ginny was rather blatant in her attempts to brush up against Harry, but he was having too much fun to realize why. Hermione knew what was going on, of course, but she really didn't want to cause a scene that would ruin the moment for Harry. Ron was just as obvious in his attempts to splash and crash Fleur, and the part-Veela was getting frustrated. So the two witches told the other three that they were going to take a break, and walked back towards dry land. Harry offered to go with them, but Hermione insisted that he stay in the water and have fun with Ron and Ginny.

Ginny thought it was an excellent idea, since it gave her the unfettered opportunity to play with Harry. Ron also thought it was an excellent idea, since it gave him the unfettered opportunity to wade into deeper waters and play with himself.

Fleur had left her beach bag partially-full in the rush to get wet. She was quick to rectify the situation, and pulled two beach chairs, a small table, and a picnic hamper out of the magically enlarged bag. Hermione opened the beach chairs while Fleur opened the hamper and pulled out a bottle of wine and two wine glasses.

"Glass…on a beach?" Hermione asked, while Fleur pulled the cork.

The French witch thumped one of the wine glasses against the side of the bottle.

"Unbreakable charms," she replied.

"Nice."

"Almost as nice as zee moment, no?" Fleur asked, as she poured a glass for Hermione.

The Muggleborn chuckled. "So nice that I forgot all about the sunglasses!"

Fleur nodded as she filled her own glass, then set the bottle back inside the wicker basket.

"So we should save zem for anozer day, zen?" she asked.

Hermione let out a girlish giggle as she looked back towards the other three teenagers.

"Now…why would we want to do that?" she asked. "Proper sun protection is just as important for your eyes as your skin, right?"

"Of course," Fleur laughed, as she sat down on one of the chairs. She took a long sip from her glass, then reached into the outside pocket of her beach bag and retrieved two pairs of dark sunglasses.

"Zere ees still one more pair zere for 'Arry," she noted, while Hermione plopped down into the other chair. The younger witch looked at what Fleur had in hand and snorted.

"Can't wear sunglasses when you crashing about in the surf, right?"

"Zat ees true."

"So once he gets out…"

"Of course."

"And it probably won't be too much longer, right?"

"No need to wait for him…our eyes need zee protection now."

"Erm…right," agreed Hermione, while she reached out and took one of the pairs.

Fleur smiled as she opened the other pair up and made to place them on her nose. She hesitated when she noticed that Hermione wasn't doing the same.

"What?" she asked.

Hermione looked at the sunglasses, then looked down towards the water's edge.

"Still doesn't seem fair while he isn't wearing them as well…or when he doesn't even know what he is showing us…"

Fleur nodded. "But eet would be awkward to explain why we were waiting eef Ginny and Ron accompany Harry, no?"

Hermione sighed. "You do have normal pairs to offer them, right?"

Fleur nodded.

"And if you think about it," Hermione reasoned. "I did give him first chance to look at me posing near-naked in the lingerie catalog…well before I got the chance to look at him doing the same."

"Zat ees an excellent rationalization!" Fleur declared.

"Good enough, at least," her roommate replied.

"So zen…we do eet togezer, on zee count of three?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "And give those two even more of a reason to wonder what's up?" she asked. "Just do it, okay? While I take a look inside the picnic hamper?"

"But he eez your boyfriend, no?"

"Fleur…I'm still a little nervous…please?"

"Very well," the part-Veela replied. Fleur leaned back into her chair, glanced towards the other three teens, and casually put on her sunglasses.

And then she fell silent.

"Fleur?"

"Yes, 'Ermione?"

"So?"

"So….I didn't know zat Molly didn't care about ze boys's bums."

"What?" Hermione hissed, as she whipped her gaze away from the inside of the basket.  
Harry had his back turned to them as he battled Ginny in a splashing contest.

"Molly doesn't care about boys' bums." Fleur repeated.

"I'd be worried if she did," Hermione replied, turning back towards the other witch.

"No what I meant waz…since magic ees mostly intent, eet ees obvious zat she doesn't zink zat we would care about ze boys's bums."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just put on zee damn sunglasses, 'Ermione."

"Yes, Mistress Fleur!" the Muggleborn quipped.

Hermione then took a deep breath, and complied with the order. She did so while facing Fleur, so the first thing that she spotted were the black spots that hovered over the French witch's breasts...black circles just slightly larger than the diameter of her nipples. An inch-wide black vertical stripe rested in between the baps, providing protective cover for her cleavage. Fleur's chest was otherwise bared to Hermione's enhanced view point. The Muggleborn let her gaze travel down the bronzed belly, until it fell upon a small black square that sat at the top of crossed bronzed legs.

Hermione could only assume that the black polygon would be more rectangular, had Fleur's legs been spread.

"You are more interested een my body zen your lover's?" Fleur teased.

Hermione shook her head, and replied, "Still building up my nerve."

To prove that point, her gaze then shifted not toward's Harry's body, but her own. She had the same black polygons hovering the same otherwise bared bits. The only apparent difference was that her chest-mounted circles were slightly larger in diameter (corresponding with slightly larger underlying bits). There also would have been small tuffs of brown bushy hair poking out from each side of her modesty strip, had she not asked Fleur to reapply a more expansive depilatory charm the night previous.

"Will you just look up at 'Arry before he turns around?" Fleur whined.

Hermione sighed, then raised her gaze towards the shoreline.

"Oh, sweet sticky buns!" she whispered.

"See what I mean?" Fleur asked.

Hermione nodded as she admired an unfettered view of Harry's backside.

"We still have strips over our behinds, right?" she asked.

"Yes."

The Muggleborn witch whistled. "Why Molly wouldn't think we'd appreciate that kind of view…."

"I am not complaining…are you?" Fleur asked.

"You really didn't know that the charm wouldn't cover his bum?"

"I have never seen zee spell cast on Bill," the French witch replied. "He 'as not been able to join us 'ere…at least not yet."

"You think he's going to come out after work?" Hermione asked, reflexively (but slowly) moving her arm over her chest.

"Eet would be good four ze four of us to 'ave ze equal footing, no?"

"Erm…yeah. Might need to let Harry in on the secret by…whoa!"

Harry had interrupted the sentence by turning around and waving at the two witches. A big smile formed on his face, and he called out, "How's it going up there?"

"Erm…just fine, Harry," Hermione called back. "You're fine, right?"

"Zere is no doubt!" Fleur whispered.

"Shush!"

Harry nodded, then turned when a large splash clipped the back of his head.

"I'll join you in a little bit, okay?" he asked, ducking underneath a second splash of water.

"C'mon, Harry…fight back!" Ginny whined.

"Take your time!" Fleur called out.

Harry nodded his head, and flashed another wide smile as he bent down to avoid Ginny's next attack.

"Oh, Fleur…it's like he knows that he's putting on a show for us!" Hermione whispered, as Harry reached back and pulled the fabric of his invisible swim costume away from his skin.

"Eet ees hard to remember zat we are still wearing ze swim costumes, since eet appears ozherwise," Fleur stated.

"I wouldn't mind getting more used to remembering," Hermione replied.

Fleur laughed. "And so… zee costume does not need magical help to hide 'Arry's 'air."

"At least not above the bulge line," Hermione agreed, as she lifted her sunglasses up and down to compare the different views now.

"Ze bulge line?" Fleur asked. "Oh, 'Ermione…zat is terrible."

"I suppose," the Muggleborn agreed.

"Although eet ees very thick," said Fleur.

Hermione leaned forward in her beach chair and stared at Harry's crotch.

"You mean his pubes are thick, right?" she asked.

"Zose too," Fleur teased.

"Are your sunglasses charmed the same way as mine?" Hermione asked. "Because I can't see anything south of the border."

"Zey are zee same," Fleur replied. "I was talking about what you showed me zee other day."

"In the catalog?"

"No, silly…in 'is shorts…when you pulled off zee bed linens een his bedroom? Don't you remember zee dragon-sized tent?"

Hermione giggled. "Erm, right…guess I did show him off a bit, didn't I?"

"More zan just a bit," Fleur said. She sipped some more wine as she watched Harry, Ron and Ginny cavort in the surf, then added, "I must have Bill teach your boyfriend zee grooming charms."

"What?" Hermione asked. "Why?"

"Because zey obviously do not teach zem to zee boys at 'Ogwarts, no?"

"Erm…yeah…girls learn that particular spell from the older girls in the dormitory. But why would boys want to shave down there?"

"For zee same reasons as zee girls, n'est pas_?_"

"So that they don't have bikini lines?"

"No, silly…so zat their lovers don't have zee curly hairs tickling their noses!"

Hermione snorted, thinking the racy comment worthy of a large swallow from her wine glass.

"You are so naughty, Fleur!" she finally replied.

"Eet ees a problem?" Fleur asked brightly.

"Not for Bill, I bet," Hermione quipped.

Fleur chuckled she leaned down towards the opened bottle of wine. Hermione's eyes drifted towards her roommate, and she gasped in surprise.

"What ees eet?" Fleur asked.

Hermione shook her head. "The way that you just lifted your leg," she replied. "You gave me a clear view of your front and back…at least it would have been clear, without the spell coverings."

"And so?"

"So there is a gap in the magic!" Hermione hissed. "You've got one spot covering your fanny, and a strip that hides the naughtier bits of bum…but they don't overlap! I can see bare skin in between!"

Fleur shrugged. "Zere is really nothing een between zee two cracks to excite zee boys, ees zere?" she asked. "At least nothing zat would show through zee swim costume?"

"I guess not," Hermione replied. "It just…surprised me, I guess."

Fleur smiled as she filled Hermione's wine glass.

"Do not worry, 'Ermione…I made sure zat you are smooth down zere, too."

The Muggleborn witch thought about Fleur's answer, then reflexively crossed her legs.

"Oh, Merlin…I can't believe that I am going to let Harry check your spell work," she groaned.

"Eet will only be eef you give 'im zee sunglasses, no?"

"Yes, I know…but it wouldn't be fair not to now that we've been ogling him for the past fifteen minutes."

Fleur nodded and raised her glass. "Liberte, egalite, et fraternite, n'est pas?"

Hermione nodded, and emptied half of her glass.

"Hey, Hermione! Why don't you jump back in?" Harry called out.

"Let me finish my glass, okay?"

"Okay," the grinning wizard called back.

Fleur shook her head as she watched Ginny let a medium-sized wave accidentally on-purpose throw her up against Harry, forcing him to wrap her in his arms just to keep his balance.

"Maybe you should drink quickly?" she asked. "Before zee waves carry Ginny's spread legs into your boyfriend's face?"

Hermione, who'd watched the same scene play out, shook her head and smiled.

"No worries," she replied. "He's been staring up towards us almost as blatantly as we've been staring at him."

"Zat ees true," Fleur agreed. "Even without seeing zee bare skin in between your front and back!" She giggled, then leaned towards her roommate and added, "I zink zat zee sunglasses will work better on him zan my allure!"

"Stop it!" Hermione protested, pushing Fleur away. Her eyes drifted towards the French witch's chest, and she noted how the magical block that covered her cleavage lengthened as Fleur squeezed her breasts together with the sides of her arms. The Muggleborn witch leaned back into her chair, looked down the length of her body, and tried to recreate the effect with her own cleavage.

"You do not need to do zat, you know," said Fleur.

Hermione dropped her arms and glanced over at Fleur.

"Just relax, and act as eef you don't know zat you are showing your body to 'Arry," the French witch offered. "You look far more sexy zat way."

The bushy-haired witch snorted. "Why Fleur, I didn't know that you noticed."

"Please, 'Ermione…eet ees talking just between us girls, no?"

"Of course," Hermione replied, as she stood up, set her wine glass on the table, and lowered the back of her chair until it sat horizontally.

"Tired of zee views already?" Fleur quipped, as her roommate laid belly-down on the canvas chair, facing away from the shoreline.

Hermione turned her face towards Fleur and shook her head.

"Working on my all-around tan," she replied. "Can't forget my bum, can I?"

"I am sure zat 'Arry won't," Fleur teased.

The conversation between the two witches lapsed for a couple of minutes, as if they each needed a breather from all of their sexually-charged banter. Not that they weren't each thinking sexually-charged thoughts, mind you…Fleur leaned back and spread her legs slightly apart, letting the sun soak through her costume and warm her bits as she ran her fingers up and down the stem of her wine glass and imagined that it was Bill she was caressing. Meanwhile, Hermione spread her own legs apart, fractional inches at a time, and imagined that Harry was wearing the special sunglasses, and looking straight up her dress and through her bloomers from the shoreline. What would he be able to see now? Or now, after she spread her legs a quarter-inch wider?

It was as just as arousing and exciting as it was scandalously worrisome. Would Harry like what he could see through those sunglasses as much as she did while she looked at him?

Hermione recalled each of the times that she felt Harry's broadcast emotions as he perved on her pictures in the lingerie catalog. She recalled them…and recounted them. And then she relaxed.

"Fleur?"

"Yes, 'Ermione?"

"How are we going to explain to Harry how the swim costumes and sunglasses work with Ron and Ginny around?"

"Eet would 'elp if he spoke French, no?"

"Yes, it would," Hermione agreed. "But short of fluency?"

Fleur nodded as she glanced back towards the other three teen-agers. She shook her head and said, "Well, I thought zat I might release both types of allure, to send both of zem off to the bushes for a good rub. But zee look as eef zey are close to doing zat on zere own!"

"What?" Hermione hissed, as she flipped over onto her back. Ginny was doing her best to line herself in between Harry and the next big wave, while Ron was standing in chest-deep water, looking up towards Fleur with submerged hands and a goofy grin on his face.

"Well that's enough of that," she declared.

"You wish to pack up and head back, zen?" asked Fleur.

Hermione shook her head. "No, I want you to push them over the edge and send them off into the bushes…I'd like some alone time with Harry."

Fleur smiled as she set her wine glass next to Hermione's and stood.

"Are you going to stay within zee area of effect as well?" she asked. "I know zat 'Arry would enjoy zee show."

Hermione snorted. "Let's limit it to what we've already planned on showing him today."

Fleur smiled as she nodded towards the back edge of the beach and the nearest row of apple trees.

"Zat should be far enough, I zink," she stated. "And eef eet ees not, zen…you are close to hiding behind zee tree, no?"

"Oh, get on with it!" Hermione hissed, as she walked towards the back of the beach. When she got to the edge she reached out and touched one of the tree trunks, as if she needed to confirm where the magic ended and reality began. Then she stepped off of the sand and stepped behind the trunk. She leaned her back against it, facing away from the beach, and took a few minutes to rehearse her prepared explanation for Harry. Once she felt mentally prepared (or as prepared as she could be at that moment) she peeked around the tree trunk to see what kind of mischief Fleur was making.

She was confused by what she saw.

Ginny, at least, was following the plan…she was in the water, riding on top of huge floating inflatable dolphin that Fleur must have pulled from her bag. She was likely riding it in more ways than one, given how hard she was rocking against the toy's dorsal fin. Ron was out of the water, lying face down in the sand just above the water line. He wasn't rocking against anything…seemed more asleep than aroused. Fleur was standing in waist-deep water, facing away from the shoreline….

And Harry was standing next to the beach chairs, staring straight towards the apple tree that Hermione was hiding behind.

Staring at the tree through a dark pair of sunglasses.

Hermione didn't know what to do…Fleur seemed unconcerned while Harry seemed bemused, with a good-sized smile on his face. She was certain that Harry was wearing the charmed pair of sunglasses…so why wasn't he appreciating the view that Fleur was offering behind him?

Because, Hermione decided, he was waiting to appreciate a different view. Of a different witch.  
_"Gryffindors forward,"_she thought to herself, as she stepped out from behind the tree and stepped onto the white sand beach.

She was too nervous to say anything as she slowly walked towards Harry. He didn't need to say anything as he began to walk towards her...the widening smile, and the licking of lips told Hermione that he liked what he was seeing.

There had been many different times and many different fantasized scenes constructed by Hermione in which Harry and she realized their love for each other and rushed into each other's arms. This was just like that, except for the fact that they appeared mostly naked to each other.

When they were within ten feet, Hermione stopped short, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "Hi, Harry...like the view?"

He nodded, as he took a step closer to her. "Just as much as you and Fleur have, I imagine," he replied, using a saucy tone of voice.

"She explained things, then?"

Harry shook his head. "No, she said that you had a speech all ready."

"Erm, yeah…I did," Hermione replied. "Except that it doesn't seem necessary now."

He shrugged, and took another step towards her.

Hermione snorted, and shook her head. "You already knew…didn't you?"

Harry smiled. "I have a very loyal future liegeman to keep me abreast of these matters…so to speak."

"Ha, ha…very funny," Hermione replied, fidgeting a bit as he took another step closer. "So… you're okay with…things?"

"No, actually…I'm not," Harry replied.

"Why is that?"

Harry took another step closer, then reached up and pulled off his sunglasses.

"Because these are too distracting."

"Really?" Hermione asked. "I would have thought that they would focus your attention, more than distract."

"Not when I want to do something other than admire the view."

"Oh…so what do you want to do, then?"

Harry snorted as he tossed his sunglasses back over his shoulder. Then he reached out, pulled Hermione's sunglasses away from her face, and tossed them aside as well.

And then he leaned forward. Hermione's eyes grew wide, and then they closed.

And then they kissed.

He only held his lips against hers for a moment before he pulled back. Hermione's lips tried to follow as she leaned towards him. She opened her eyes and asked, "Why did you stop?"

Harry smiled. "Wanted to make sure you were okay with it."

"Huh…so did you figure that out, then?"

The raven-haired wizard chuckled as he reached up and scratched the back of his neck.

"I think so," he said, flashing a rakish grin.

Hermione took a step forward, pulled his hand away from the back of his neck, then grabbed his neck so that he couldn't squirm away from the kiss that she planted on _his_lips.

They snogged for a few moments, before breaking the connection for some air.

"Been wanting to do that for a while," he confessed.

"So have I," Hermione whispered, as she caressed the side of Harry's face.

"It's been so hard," he hissed.

Hermione looked down and giggled.

"Can't really tell with Molly's spell, can I?"

Harry laughed.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah…I think I do."

They kissed a little while longer, before Harry stepped backwards.

"We better stop," he said.

"Why?" Hermione asked, looking past his shoulder. "Ron still looks like he's sleeping, and Ginny's still grinding against Fleur's toy."

That description piqued Harry's curiosity enough to warrant a glance over his shoulder.

"Hey!" Hermione protested.

"Sorry…the way you said it…"

"You're forgiven…I guess."

"Good," said Harry. "But we still should stop…unless you're ready to let everyone know that we're…"

"That we're what, Harry?"

"Erm…more than just best friends?"

"Would that make us boyfriend and girlfriend, then?" Hermione asked.

Harry chewed on his lip. "If that's what you want."

"You mean you have to ask?"

"Well…"

"Think that I'd let just anybody see a picture of me in that harem girl outfit?"

Harry laughed. "Erm, right. So…just to make it official…"

Hermione leaned forward and planted a tender kiss on his lips.

"I would love to be your girlfriend, Harry."

"Brilliant!" he exclaimed. "But should we…"

"No, probably best that we keep this a secret…at least from anyone other than Bill and Fleur."

Harry nodded.

"It's hard enough to find time together as it is now," he said. He turned back towards the shoreline, and sighed.

"That's the signal, then," he said.

"What's the signal?"

"Fleur is facing this way," Harry explained. "There was somebody else caught in the allure when she zapped Ginny…someone who was just on the other side of the pond watching us…Fleur smelled her."

"Smelled her?"

Harry shrugged as they started walking back towards the chairs.

"Guess she was in the area of effect as well."

"Who was it?"

Harry snorted. "Don't know for certain, but for the sake of my sanity I am going to assume that it was not Molly."

"Good idea."

"Right, so…Fleur was playing lookout, until whomever it is out there managed to…"

"Finish off?"

"Yeah."

"So she's likely rubbed off and is back on her watch…but Ginny is still working?"

Harry stopped, looked down at the beach sand and retrieved their sunglasses.

"Just lie to me if Ginny's looking towards me while she's…"

"Masturbating?" Hermione teased.

"Well, if you want to get all clinical…"

Hermione laughed. "No worries, Harry…her eyes are still closed." She looked closer to shore and asked, "So what happened to Ron?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "He popped in his suit two seconds after Fleur zapped him. Then he got all weak and wobbly, so she suggested that he take a nap."

"Face down in the sand?"

"She didn't get that specific…she was thinking he'd use one of the chairs, but he obviously didn't make it that far."

"Ah…makes sense," she replied. "So you didn't get caught in that area of effect as well, then?"

Harry shrugged. "Almost wish I had…it's painfully hard right now."

Hermione giggled. "Would you be scandalized if I said that I was in the same boat?"

Her newly-proclaimed boyfriend smiled and shook his head. "Actually, I thought that might have been the reason why you were hiding behind that tree."

"Harry!"

"What?"

"Never mind…let me assure you that I was not rubbing off behind the tree."

"Oh…but you still kind of feel the need to?"

"As if you have to ask," she replied. Hermione looked out towards the crashing waves and noted, "That water would be deep enough for you, you know."

"For you, too," Harry replied. "Unless you wanted to wait your turn to ride that toy?"

Hermione laughed.

"Let's head back, before I have an accident."

Harry arched an eyebrow.

"Not that kind of accident, you perv," she said. "I have to use the loo."

"Ah," said Harry. "Ron seemed to think that the pond was suitable for that kind of thing."

"Well he would...so is that why Fleur has the little yellow ducky swimming in tight circles around her?"

"I imagine so."

"Hello, 'Ermione…and 'Arry," Fleur called out. She plucked the rubber duck out of the water, waded onto shore, and asked, "Eet ees time to go?"

Harry nodded. "Hermione has to relieve herself."

"Stop it, Harry!"

"What?" he protested. "Didn't you just tell me that?"

"Yes, but that could have been taken another way."

"Ah, I see," Harry replied. "But didn't you also just admit that the alternative interpretation was equally valid?"

"Harry!"

Fleur laughed as began packing her beach bag.

"Eet ees useless to deny zat to one wiz zee Veela's nose, 'Ermione," she noted.

"Doesn't mean that either of you have to announce it to the world," Hermione pouted.

Harry and Fleur each had several snarky responses to this comment on the tips of their tongues. But they decided not to voice those witty comebacks, since it might have led to a lengthy discussion that could have delayed their departure. And they each were eager to have Molly's spell undone, since Hermione wasn't the only one who had developed compelling needs for relief.


	6. Chapter 6: Hermione Hearts Harry

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: **I got really tired of writing out (and reading) Fleur's French accent in the last chapter's dialogues…tired enough to do something about it. And so the words began to flow. Please don't get spoiled with the uncharacteristically short turn-around time, but please do review. I'm especially interested in hearing from those who thought that I danced a little too closely to the line that divides "delightfully smutty" from "disgustingly juvenile" in the last chapter. I'm hoping this might have a better balance.

Thanks to everyone from the Seel'vor group that read and editing a draft version of this update.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**Canon Question of the day: **What did Fleur do at Gringotts that helped her learn English?

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 6: Hermione Hearts Harry**

**oo00OO00oo**

Molly's hovering grew even more insistent after Harry's eventful (and eye-popping) first trip to the beach. Hermione and her new boyfriend didn't want to give the Weasley matriarch any more reasons to develop fully warrented concerns, so they did everything that night short of snogging Ron and Ginny (respectively) to keep her off-trail. This included limiting interactions with their familiars, since they had now become even better emotional transmitters.

Crookshanks and Hedwig would have been more upset about these intentional snubs, had they not found outlets to channel their own urges in species-appropriate ways.

When Bill arrived home from work he quickly guessed far more about the situation than his mother actually knew. He wanted details, but realized that Fleur and he were probably under just as much scrutiny. So he bided his time, and mentioned more than once during dinner that both Fleur and he had work at Gringotts the following day (even though it was a Saturday). The-Boy-Who-Lived took the message to heart, and sat down in his room that night to write his first official love letter.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry was woken the next morning by a shake of his shoulder, rather than by a nip at his ear.

"Okay, Sleepyhead…time to rise and shine!"

The teen-aged wizard groaned as he slowly opened his eyes and looked up at his future liegeman, dressed in his Gringotts work robes.

"Didn't you _hear_ the call to breakfast?" the red-haired curse-breaker asked, pointing first at his own ear and then towards the hallway.

Harry's lips formed into a lazy smirk as he nodded in understanding. He glanced towards the open door, and (once he saw that there was no one else watching) bounced the back of his head against the pillow.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he whined, in time with the bouncing.

Bill grinned, and stepped sideways so that his body blocked the view of Harry's head from the opened doorway. Once he did that, the prone wizard rolled over onto his side and pulled his pillow over his head.

"Ten more minutes?" he mumbled.

Bill spotted the unaddressed envelope that had been hiding under Harry's pillow and nodded. He expanded a button on front of his robes with a touch of his wand and quickly slipped the letter inside.

"Okay, but you should know that Fleur and I are heading out the floo now, and that Ron's already sitting at the table," the curse-breaker joked, as he reduced the button box back down to size.

Harry pulled the pillow away and sat up. He rolled his eyes when he spotted the older wizard applying wet (but silent) kisses to the button cap.

"Tell your mum that I'll be down in five," he muttered, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. Bill was thrown off-balance by a well-placed elbow to the ribs as Harry brushed by on the way to the bathroom.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry was surprised to see that there was still plenty of food left on the kitchen table when he got downstairs. He was also surprised to see that Arthur was at that table, dressed in his work robes.

"Have to go to the Ministry today, Mr. Weasley?" he asked, taking a seat at the table.

Arthur shrugged as he glanced up from the morning newspaper.

"I am supposed to have the weekend off," he replied. "But I've been out in the field all week, and haven't had any time to respond to correspondence or review the incident reports."

Molly let a "harrumph!" escape from her lips.

"You should have subordinates doing that now that you have staff working for you," she suggested.

"They've been just as busy as I have, Mollywobbles," Arthur replied. "And as long as I'm going to be out making that delivery…."

Ron nudged Harry in the ribs with an elbow to get his attention.

"Dad's taking our first batch of potions to Fred and George's shop," he announced. "There's four galleons, seven sickles and three knuts to be split amongst us."

"Bill will be depositing those four galleons, seven sickles and three knuts into the family vault," Molly corrected. "No sense having those coins burning holes in pockets when they can't be spent."

"But Mum…"

"None of that, young man," Molly snapped. She turned to Harry and said, "We'll keep your share safe as well, Dear…no reason for William to scurry around to different vaults every time there's a deposit to be made."

Arthur looked up from the paper. "Are we holding Hermione's share as well?"

"Of course, Dear," Molly replied. "Where else could she keep it?"

Harry bit down hard on a piece of toast to keep from audibly reacting to the presumption. He reminded himself to ask Hermione if she was aware of how helpful Molly was being with their portion of the money earned from brewing potions. Not that Hermione and he were all that much concerned after the discussion that he'd had with George during his bedroom redecorating.

As a silent partner in the Twins's business, Harry stood to receive roughly three times the amount that Molly and Ron were crowing over as his share of the profits earned when those potions were sold. He had also, as a Director in the company, signed off on the idea of hiring Hermione as an ad hoc consultant. Her first "paycheck" for that work would be disbursed within the next week, in the form of a direct Gringotts transfer into a new vault that Bill was secretly helping Hermione establish.

It was raining that morning, but not raining hard enough for Molly to keep Ron from dragging Harry outside for more ground-level Quidditch practice after breakfast had ended and Arthur left for work. The raven-haired teen didn't resist too much…Hermione was happily immersed in a book, while Ginny was upstairs in her room whispering procreative encouragements into the fluffy little ears of her Pygmy Puffs.

**oo00OO00oo**

Deep within the back rooms of Gringotts, a goblin account manager was skiving off. Now, this was usually a very risky thing to do, given the expectations of senior management and their willingness to enforce a rather bloody corporate disciplinary policy. But this one particular account manager thought that he had just earned a "get out of shite free" card, given the amount of money that he'd just made for the bank.

The account manager was displaying this level of cavalier confidence by sitting alone in his office, with his vest unbuttoned and his feet up. A mug of ten-year old lichenale was in his hand, and the latest issue of the goblin equivalent of "Jugs" was balanced on his lap.

There was a scratch on the door. He ignored it.

"Dragnut!" a voice called from the other side of the door. "It's me! I know that you're in there!"

The goblin looked up from his magazine and sighed. There were times when it sucked having your wife's nephew working in the same department. Those times invariably coincided with normal bank hours.

"Hang a nail, Loafchuck!" he called back.

"But it's important!"

Dragnut sighed as he reluctantly slipped his feet off the desk and buried the goblin porn under a stack of parchment.

"Come in, then," he whined, pasting a fake smile on his face as his nephew walked through the door.

"Loafchuck, it's great to see you…come share a drink with me, and I'll tell you my latest galleon-gobbling tale!"

The younger goblin entered Dragnut's office with a worried expression on his face.

"What did you do this time, Uncle?" he hissed. "Steelebridge just sent me to fetch you…and he was furious!"

"Really?" the older goblin asked. "He must be sharpening for somebody else's balls…all that _I_ have done _this time _is earn the bank a dozen carts worth of coin!"

"Are you sure?" the nervous message runner asked. "Because he was really, really angry…and yours was one of the two names that kept flying from his lips alongside the froth and spittle."

Dragnut sucked in a short breath and held it for a moment. This didn't sound very good.

"So…what was the other name?"

"Knifesnap."

"_Shite!"_ Dragnut thought. Trying to maintain a calm facade, he asked his nephew, "So…Loafchuck…just how angry was Steelebridge?"

The other goblin shrugged. "Maybe I am overreacting?"

"You think?" Dragnut snarked. "That's something that only happens every…what…every ten minutes or so?"

The young goblin slumped his shoulders and slinked into a seat in front of his uncle's desk. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a chronic worry-wart."

The older goblin sighed. "So was Steelebridge angry, or not angry?"

"Oh, he was angry, alright," said Loafchuck. "But it's not like it was the most important thing on his mind."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because if it was, then I would have been the first runner dispatched from his office, rather than the second."

Dragnut arched an eyebrow.

"So…do you know where the first runner was sent?"

Loafchuck nodded. "The first runner was sent to the commissary."

"Ah…so maybe he wants to share a working lunch with me?"

The younger goblin shrugged. "If that's the case, then I hope you like pickled smugroot."

Dragnut sucked in a deep breath.

"What did you just say?"

"I asked if you liked pickled smugroot, because that first runner was ordered to bring a whole plate of the stuff back to Steelebridge's office."

"I see," the older goblin replied. "Are you sure about that…he ordered-out for _pickled_ smugroot?"

The younger goblin nodded.

"Bat scat!" Dragnut hissed, as he bolted up from his desk and began to pace back and forth. A few seconds later he stopped, reached for the mug that he'd left on his desk, and chugged it. Then he walked over to the credenza, refilled the mug from a large decanter…and then chugged the decanter.

"That bad, Uncle?" the young goblin asked nervously.

Dragnut glanced towards his nephew while the decanter was still at his lips, which caused him to dribble a fair amount over his chin and shirt. The goblin snorted, slammed the decanter back onto the credenza, then cursed his nephew for making him waste perfectly-good intoxicant.

"Are you sure that you want to go there like that?" Loafchuck asked nervously, as his uncle wiped his face with the sleeve of his ale-stained shirt.

Dragnut glared at him for a second, then glanced down at the front of his shirt, and nodded.

"You are a persistent worry-wart," he stated, while he slipped off his silk vest and draped it against his desk chair. "But sometimes that's what's needed to keep your head," he added. Buttons scattered into the air as Dragnut suddenly and violently ripped open the front of his dress shirt.

"Erm…thank you, Uncle."

The now bare-chested goblin shrugged as he walked back behind his desk, reached down to the lowermost drawer, and pulled a crisply-folded dress shirt from the top of a pile that he kept for just this kind of contingency.

"Don't you think you should hurry?" Loafchuck asked.

Dragnut glanced over at the young goblin and shook his head.

"Someday you'll learn how this place is run," he muttered, as he slipped the shirt on and began to button it. "I don't want to finger scratch Steelebridge's door until he's had a chance to eat that take-away."

"But doesn't delaying only make things worse if he's angry?"

Dragnut shook his head, and patted his nephew on the shoulder. He slipped his vest back on and began to slowly button it up.

"Not in this case, son…not in this case."

The older goblin checked his appearance in the reflection on the door glass. He smoothed down his hair, checked his teeth, then brushed a piece of lint off his vest. Grimly satisfied, he opened the door.

"Go on, then," Dragnut encouraged, swinging a hand out towards the hallway. "Inform Steelebridge's secretary that you've completed your task, and that I'll be down there as soon as practicable."

The young goblin look as if he might break out into tears as he rushed up to his uncle and wrapped his arms around him. Dragnut smiled, and tried to be reassuring.

"Don't worry, Loafchuck," he said, patting the younger goblin on the back. "You were right. If Steelebridge was _really_ angry, he would have only sent one runner, rather than two."

"If you say so," the youngster said. "Good bye, Uncle," he added, as he dashed out the door.

Dragnut glanced down at his watch and nodded. He watched his nephew disappear down a hallway, then turned and began to walk in the opposite direction…towards the Goblin Resources Department. A short visit there would add ten minutes to his trip, and might make his boss even angrier. That said, there were good reasons for him to double-check that his next-of-kin contact information was accurate, and that his employer-provided life insurance and long-term disability plans were up to date.

Pickled smugroot wasn't a goblin delicacy…it was goblin medicine. And as far as Dragnut knew, there was only one medical condition for which pickled smugroot was prescribed….

Bloodlust.

The very-worried goblin cringed as he thought about the blood-stained edges on the double-bladed axes that hung behind his superior's desk. Steelebridge's first day at the bank came right after his last day in the army. He'd spent twenty-five years in the barracks, and had brought all of that experience (and all of his bloodied axes) with him to Gringotts.

Dragnut's walking pace became even more deliberate. He wanted to give his boss every opportunity to digest that pickled smugroot.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry tossed one last Quaffle towards the hoops, then told Ron that he was going to rest his tired arm. The red-haired wizard would have protested more vigorously if the rain hadn't been picking up.

When the two boys went inside they were surprised to hear Fleur's voice drifting into the kitchen from the sitting room.

"Why is she back so early?" Ron asked.

Molly didn't think that an answer required her to turn away from her stove.

"Fleur was sent home," she explained.

Ginny, who was playing with her pets at the table, was all too happy to gleefully elaborate.

"Apparently, one of the bank customers complained to her boss," she said. "Claimed that he couldn't understand her French accented-English, and said that he should not have to tolerate incompetent foreigners."

"What a lousy git!" Harry declared.

Ginny shrugged. "It's not his fault that Phlegm can't speak proper English."

"So how good is your proper French, Ginny?" Harry snarked.

The red-haired teen snorted, and loudly declared, "Doesn't matter, since I am here _in England_!"

"Ginny!" Hermione exclaimed, as she entered the kitchen.

"What?" she shot back.

Fleur pushed past Hermione and entered the kitchen just long enough to cross over to the stairwell and disappear silently up the steps.

Hermione let out a deep sigh. "We could hear everything you just said in the other room!" she hissed.

The youngest Weasley shrugged. "So? Did I get the story wrong?"

"No," Hermione replied. "But you could have been more sympathetic, or kept your voice down."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "So are we going to have to walk on zee eggshells around zee 'ouse?"

The Muggleborn witch shook her head in disgust.

"Hermione," said Molly, nodding towards stove-top cauldron. "It's almost time for you to add the valerian root."

"Why don't you let me do that, Mrs. Weasley," Harry volunteered. "That way Hermione could go upstairs and talk with Fleur?"

"Mollycoddling," Molly muttered to herself.

"But then you wouldn't have to worry about eggshells," Hermione reasoned. "And maybe…maybe I could use the time to work with Fleur on her accent?"

Molly snorted.

"So when are you going to find the time to prepare all of the potions that you begged me to allow you to brew?" Molly asked.

"I can do it," said Harry.

"Then who is going to play Quidditch with me?" Ron whined.

Harry didn't like the way that either Fleur or Hermione were being treated. Seeing how fruitless it would be to argue based on reason or compassion, he decided to tap into some Slytherin cunning.

"Well, Ron, it seems like Fleur will have lots of time to play Quidditch, if Gringotts keeps sending her home because of her accent," he stated. Then he turned to Molly and added, "And if she's not going to be working part-time at Gringotts then she'll have plenty of time to help us brew…guess we'll be seeing a lot more of her here in the kitchen, huh?"

Ron kind of liked this idea. Ginny…less so.

"Oh, that would be a disaster," she hissed.

"Well it sounds like that is how it's going to be, unless her English improves," Hermione stated, following Harry's lead.

"She could always go home to France?" Ginny suggested.

Harry arched an eyebrow. "That is a possibility," he said slowly, as if he were considering the idea. He then shrugged and added, "So long as there is no _other_ reason for her to live at the Burrow this Summer?"

Molly shook her head. "Fleur still has her guard responsibilities," she reluctantly admitted. "She's here for the entire summer."

"Well that's that, then," Harry stated. "Look at the bright side, Ginny…this will mean a lot more time at the beach with Fleur."

Ron really liked this idea now. Molly, much less so. She sighed, and turned towards Hermione.

"Do you really think that you could help her learn proper English?"

Hermione shrugged and nodded her head. "Maybe…I don't know anything about teaching English as a Second Language, but…she knows the vocabulary. Seems like it's mostly the accent that needs work…not dropping the "h" when it starts a word, or turning her '_th_'s' into '_z_'s'."

Molly nodded towards the stairs. "Off you go, then. But there'll not be any skiving…I expect to see some improvements in short order."

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione replied dutifully. She barely managed to keep a straight face as she walked up the stairs.

**oo00OO00oo**

"Yes?" the retired warriorl barked, in response to the finger-scratched door.

His secretary opened that door just wide enough to pop her head through.

"Dragnut is here to see you, Sir."

"Send him in!"

"Yes, Sir," the secretary replied.

Dragnut had his gaze focused towards his feet as he entered his superior's office. He walked slowly up towards Steelebridge's massive desk, careful to appear contrite, and to not speak until spoken too.

"Sit down, Dragnut, sit down."

The nervous goblin was caught off-guard by the friendly tone of voice. He looked up a bit…not enough to risk making eye-contact, but enough to notice a large plate on that large desk, empty save for a bit of pickle juice.

"You asked so see me, Sir?" Dragnut asked, as he carefully shifted into one of the two chairs that faced the desk.

"Why yes…yes I did," the older goblin replied. "Relax, son…I'm not going to bite your head off."

Dragnut nodded. His boss's assurances weren't all that comforting, though, since Steelebridge had a well-earned battlefield reputation for lopping off heads with his axes, rather than biting them off with his teeth.

"Would you like a drink?"

"No, Sir."

"Well, then…why don't you sit back and tell me about your day?" the older goblin suggested. "I hear that it has been quite profitable so far."'

Dragnut was surprised enough by the question to look up at his boss's scarred face. Steelebridge was showing him a pointy-toothed grin.

Maybe his wizard-brained nephew had got it all wrong?

"Erm…certainly, Sir," Dragnut replied. "Well, as you know, Billy Beck was here this morning to negotiate several different contracts on behalf of the North American wizard-run bank that he works for."

"Yes, I understand that these were very important…and potentially very profitable contracts. Profitable for Gringotts, that is."

"Yes, Sir. As the account manager, I have been working closely with all of the different departments to make sure that all of that favorable contract language was in place, and that everything was ready for Beck's visit this morning."

"You've been the manager of this account for, what…three years?" Steelebridge asked.

"Yes, Sir."

"And you've worked with this wizard before?"

"Yes, Sir…we've met several times, both here in London and in Salem."

"So you've gotten to know Billy Beck pretty well, then, I take it?"

"Well…I guess as well as any of us can actually know a wizard," said Dragnut confidently. "That's one of the main responsibilities of an account manager, after all."

"Yes, it is," Steelebridge agreed. The senior manager then picked up a small folder from his desktop.

"I just reread the internal client profile that you worked up on this wizard," he stated. "Very detailed work, Dragnut…very detailed, and very impressive."

"Thank you, Sir."

The older goblin turned to a dog-eared page and read out loud.

"At the present time, the wizard Billy Beck has a wife, two children, and three mistresses. He considers himself to be a so-called 'ladies man,' and flirts shamelessly with every pretty witch that catches his eye. He is therefore easily distracted and readily manipulated. These serious character flaws have been exploited to Gringotts's gain during previous transactions."

Steelebridge glanced away from the report.

"You wrote that, correct?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And you have acted on this assessment during Beck's latest visit?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Tell me more."

Dragnut nodded. "Well, Sir…I was going to wait until Monday to submit my expense report, but…but when I do, you'll no doubt notice a receipt from Madame Maxine's."

"The brothel?"

"Yes, Sir," Dragnut replied. "Very discreet and very professional."

"So to speak?"

Dragnut chuckled, and nodded at his boss's joke. Things were going far, far better than he had feared.

"I've set this sort of thing up before," the account manager explained. "Two of Madame Maxine's employees were dispatched to the Leaky Cauldron last night, where Beck was staying. They spotted him in the bar, and allowed themselves to be beguiled by his charm."

"Allowed themselves to be charmed out of their knickers?"

"Yes, Sir," Dragnut replied. "The contrivance is that the whole time they pretend that they aren't professionals, and allow Beck to believe that he successfully seduced his way into a three-way."

"So he doesn't even know that Gringotts is paying dearly for these services?"

"No, Sir."

"And this is advantageous, how?"

"It always puts Beck in a very agreeable mood," Dragnut explained. "Makes him feel confident, and virile, and eager to come to London to do business with us as often as possible."

Steelebridge rolled his eyes. "Wizards, always thinking with their other heads."

Dragnut grinned. "Perhaps years from now he might realize that it is more than just coincidence that he falls into bed with two witches every time he does business with us…not that I imagine that he'd actually be all that upset if he realized that he'd been fooled."

Steelebridge nodded.

"I understand that you took some initiative and expanded your client management program this morning?" he asked.

Had Dragnut's mind not drifted back towards profits and pictures of bare-naked goblin jugs he might have noticed the slight hardening in his boss's tone of voice.

"Yes, Sir," he replied, pride dripping in his voice. "We took advantage of a new employee."

"That you did, Dragnut…that you did," Steelebridge muttered under his breath.

"Go on, then," he said in a louder-volumed voice.

"Well, Sir…there's this part-Veela, part-human witch working at the new reception desk. For a non-goblin, she is admittedly very pretty… I've seen more than one wizard swoon in her presence." Dragnut chuckled, then added, "She might even be a more effective way of keeping the wizards standing in those long queues than our hobgoblins and their halberds!"

"What's her name?"

"Erm…Flower, I think. Of maybe Floor…Floor de la Bore?" the account manager asked. "Doesn't matter, I guess. So…I called in a favor from her boss Knifesnap, and got him to reassign her to me for the day."

"What did you then assign her to do?"

Dragnut shrugged. "I tasked her with looking pretty…to give Beck's wandering eye a reason to wander. I also told her to act as his hostess during his visit. Make sure that he had coffee or tea, and escort him from one department to the next…nothing strenuous."

"_Nothing_ strenuous?" Steelebridge asked.

Warning bells rang inside Dragnut's head…there was no mistaking the sharp edge to _that _question.

"Nothing more strenuous than holding a pot of coffee," he said rather meekly.

Steelebridge clamped down on the medicated urge to reach for his axes.

"It is standard Gringotts policy for an account manager to escort their high-end clients from department to department as they conduct their business…is it not?"

"Yes, Sir, and I've done that before, but…well…I just thought that if the Veela walked him around, then his eyes would wander over her, instead of over the fine print in each of those contracts. He does prefer yellow-haired witches, after all."

Steelebridge ground his teeth.

"So…you met your client at the door, introduced him to Miss Delacour, then disappeared?"

"Erm..no, Sir. I was scheduled to meet with him at the end, but…he had to cut his visit short."

"Yes…I understand that he left before he signed the last contract."

"Erm, yes, Sir. Although…that is not exactly bad news."

"How is that?"

"Because that last one involved the least amount of profit to Gringotts, Sir," Dragnut explained. "I always like to get the gouging done early. Client's tend to remember the last contracts they sign more than the first, so if they remember the one that they think they made a profit on, then…they leave happy, and we stay profitable."

Steelebridge glared across his desk, causing the younger goblin to shrink down into his chair.

"Tell me, Dragnut…was your client happy when he left the bank this morning?"

Dragnut winced, now realizing why his boss might be a little upset.

"Well, Sir…I'm understand that Beck got a little frustrated with his Veela hostess. She is very pretty, but she is also French, and he found it difficult to understand her accent."

"And how did you handle that situation?"

"Erm, well, Sir….to be honest, the Veela's boss dealt with that issue before I was made aware of it. I understand that he dismissed her for the day, and told her not to come back until her English had improved."

"Is that what you understand?" Steelebridge asked. "Or is that what you know?"

Dragnut cowered. "That is what her supervisor Knifesnap told me happened, and how he said he defused the situation."

Steelebridge snorted.

"So you didn't ask the young woman for her side of the story?"

"She was gone before I would have had a chance to do that, Sir," Dragnut replied.

"Well if you had, you might have learned that in between the signing of the sixth and seventh contracts that Beck fondled her buttocks, pushed her into an empty office, and tried to lift up her robes."

"That's what she says happened?"

Steelebridge nodded. "Yes. Fortunately, Miss Delacour was able to follow the policies in her Gringotts Employee Handbook to resolve the situation."

"How did she do that?"

"She kneed him in the balls."

"Oh."

Steelebridge nodded. "And that was when Beck got angry, ran to the young woman's boss, and started to complain about her accent."

"Oh, well…I didn't hear anything about that…assuming that it's true," Dragnut said. "And since it was her superior who managed the situation, and since he was the one to decide on any disciplinary actions…"

"Yes, yes…it is always better when your direct supervisor deals with disciplinary situations, isn't it?"

Not knowing what to say to that, Dragnut said nothing.

Steelebridge glanced up at his axes, then reluctantly returned his gaze to his subordinate.

"Remind me, Dragnut…who is your direct supervisor?"

"Erm…you are, Sir."

The retired soldier slammed his fist against the desk and bellowed. "Yes, I am, you little piece of flobberworm shite…so now your arse is mine!"

The outcome of this outburst was remarkably similar to a successfully cast _Petrificus Totalus_ spell…at least when that spell is combined with a bladder relaxing jinx.

"Mossbite!" Steelebridge shouted.

The goblin's secretary nervously popped her head inside the door.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Send in Chokebar and Toetwist."

"Yes, Sir."

A moment later, two grey-haired goblins strode into the room. Rather than take seats in front of the desk, they each walked around that desk and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Steelebridge.

"Dragnut, I assume that you know Chokebar…senior account manager for the Potter and Black estates?"

The cowering (and wet) goblin winced.

"You probably haven't met Toetwist, before," said Steelebridge.

Dragnut looked at the other goblin, who looked every inch the retired warrior that Steelebridge was, and shook his head.

"Let me make introductions, then. Dragnut, this is Toetwist. He is the bank's Senior Vice-President in Charge of Curse Breaking and Tomb Raiding."

Steelebridge then gestured across the desk and said, "Toetwist, this is Dragnut…the unfortunate son of a bitch who, I'm sorry to say, might have just lost you the services of Bill Weasley."

Toetwist's eyes narrowed as he growled at the account manager.

"Have you ever met Bill Weasley, Dragnut?" asked Steelebridge.

The self-soiled goblin shook his head.

"He's one of the wizards that works for us… happens to be one of the very best curse-breakers working in Toetwist's department. He also just happens to be engaged to the Fleur Delacour, the French witch that you tasked with distracting Billy Beck."

Dragnut swallowed hard (and audibly).

Steelebridge shook his head. "Toetwist, how much will it cost you to replace Weasley if he decides he no longer wishes to work for the bank that just dismissed his fiancee?"

The other goblin snorted. "He's damn near irreplaceable. Don't know how much we'd have to pay someone to do his job…that assumes that someone like that even exists!"

"But if you had to put a galleon amount on his value?"

Toetwist growled. "Let's just say that in the last fiscal year, Bill Weasley led expeditions that yielded bank profits of over four hundred and fifty thousand galleons."

Steelebridge nodded. He turned towards Dragnut and asked, "And how much profit did the Beck account clear over the same period of time?"

The account manager let out a very small yelp, then replied (with only slightly louder volume). "Seventy-four thousand galleons and change, Sir."

His boss snorted derisively. "Right, then…moving on…maybe you are wondering why I asked your colleague to join us today?"

Dragnut nodded.

His boss turned towards Chokebar, and yielded him the floor with a gesture. The grey-haired goblin nodded, and turned angrily to Dragnut.

"Did you see the internal departmental memo that I wrote earlier this summer, announcing that with the execution of the late Lord Black's will that his estate would now be run in conjunction with the Potter account?"

Dragnut squeaked out a "yes."

"Do you remember why that is the case?"

"Because…he left his title and the bulk of the estate to his godson, the Potter scion?"

Chokebar snorted as he turned to Steelebridge and said, "Well, he's got a good memory, at least…might be worth salvaging."

Dragnut didn't care for that last assessment.

"You are correct about the joining of the two estates," Chokebar told him. "We anticipate that they will, in fact, become melded into one account in two weeks time, when the Heir Imminent to both the Potter and Black lordships reaches his sixteenth birthday."

Dragnut nodded his head.

"So maybe you read that memo as well?" asked Chokebar. "Well, then…have you read the guest list for the future Lord Potter-Black's birthday party?"

Dragnut shook his head.

"Want to guess who is going to be on that list?"

Dragnut squeaked, "Erm…Bill Weasley and his fiancee?"

Steelebridge couldn't help laughing.

"Well, he has both a good memory and makes good guesses!" he declared. "Things are looking up for you, Dragnut."

Chokebar agreed. "I haven't seen that guest list either, but it is reasonable to assume that those two will be attending…_since Harry Potter and they are presently sleeping under the same roof_!"

Steelebridge played tag-team, and added, "Harry Potter has spent a portion of each Summer with Bill Weasley's parents for several years now, and his best male friend is Bill's younger brother."

Toetwist wanted to pile on, so he said, "And I have taken my best curse-breaker out of the field, and asked him to spend an hour or so each day meeting with Chokebar." The tomb raiding vice-president then asked, "Do you know why I did this?"

Dragnut shook his head.

"Because Bill Weasley is presently the only point of contact that Gringotts has with Harry Potter, you arse!" Chokebar shouted.

Steelebridge growled. "If Bill Weasley leaves Gringotts, we lose that only point of contact. And if Bill Weasley tells Harry Potter why he left…how much did we clear last year on those two accounts?"

"One point three million galleons," Chokebar replied.

Dragnut's boss turned away in disgust and spat onto the floor.

"So, Dragnut," asked Toetwist. "What is going to be Gringotts net profit if we balance what we gained from your piddling efforts today against the potential loss of my best curse-breaker and Chokebar's biggest accounts?"

The very junior account manager bowed his head down in shame.

"Yes, Sir. I'm very sorry, Sir."

Steelebridge's eyes widened. He snatched the pickle-juiced stained plate and smashed it to pieces against his desk.

"You should be fucking sorry, you lizard-fucking shite!"

Dragnut's boss regained just enough control over his residual bloodlust to reach down and brush pottery shards off of a piece of parchment. He then pushed parchment across his desk.

"This is what is going to happen," he declared icily. "You are going to sign this very sincere letter of apology, which will immediately be sent to Miss Delacour. Then you are going to be marched down to meet with Bill Weasley, where you will explain exactly what you did to his fiancee. And then, once we've scraped what is left of you off of the floor, you'll immediately begin your new assignment."

Dragnut nodded meekly, raising not a word in protest when it was strongly suggested that he demonstrate his remorse by signing the letter of apology in his blood. Once this was done Toetwist grabbed the former account manager by the scruff of his neck, and began to frogmarch him out of the office.

"Hold on," Steelebridge requested.

Toetwist roughly spun Dragnut around.

"There should be a shovel leaning on the wall just outside my office," he noted. "Take it…unless you would rather spend the next six months mucking out the dragon pens by hand?"

Dragnut whimpered, then gathered just enough courage to ask a question that had been lingering in the back of his mind.

"But…but I wasn't the one that dismissed her, Sir!" he weakly protested. "Knifesnap was her supervisor…so what's happening to him?"

Steelebridge grinned. "Oh, don't worry, Dragnut…I'm sure that you will see Knifesnap in two or three days."

"I will?" he asked.

Toetwist let out a rough laugh as he dragged Dragnut (and his new shovel) down the hall.

"Seeing him in three days sounds about right," he told the former account manager. "Usually takes the bastards that long to work their way through the dragon's digestive tract."

**oo00OO00oo**

Dragnut's apology was attached to a separate letter of apology written by Steelebridge. There was a Gringotts mail owl waiting to deliver those letters to Fleur when she walked into the bedroom that she shared with Hermione. The French witch read the apologies while Hermione was downstairs negotiating with Molly, finishing them just before the Muggleborn witch joined her upstairs.

Hermione arched an eyebrow when she entered the bedroom and found Fleur sitting on her bed, looking closely at a Muggle charge card.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Eet ees a charge card."

"Yes, I know that, but…"

"Eet ees compensation from Gringotts," Fleur stated, as she gestured towards the two letters that sat on the duvet. "Zey wish me to return to work on Tuesday."

"That's great, Fleur…but what's that got to do with a Muggle charge card?"

Fleur smiled. "One of zee senior goblins fixed it to the bottom of his letter of apology, saying zat when 'is wife is unhappy zat she always feels better after she goes shopping."

"But why not something you could spend in Diagon Alley?"

Fleur snorted. "The goblin said zat after being treated zat way by a wizard that he thought I might rather do my shopping in the Muggle world."

Hermione snorted. "So…_now_ they have regrets about the situation?"

Fleur couldn't help but giggle.

"I am certain zat my old boss ees now regretting 'is situation," she replied.

The Muggleborn's facial expression clearly conveyed her confusion. Fleur helped clear that confusion up by sharing the two letters, and by providing a more complete explanation than what she'd been able to give downstairs.

Hermione had been furious when she heard the whole story, and was still in the mood to commiserate and castigate with righteous indignation (in spite of the apologies and disciplinary actions). But Fleur wanted to talk more about shopping than sexual harassment, and was anxious to calm Hermione down. She did this by handing her roommate a third letter…a letter that had arrived at the Burrow not on the leg of an owl, but inside the hidden compartment of a button.

It was Harry's love letter. And, needless to say, it abruptly shifted Hermione entire focus and attitude.

The prose was a little mushy, and a little flowery, and a little apologetic (Harry explaining that he had no real role model or examples to base this type of letter on). But it was also sweet, and endearing, and surprisingly tender.

Hermione was enthralled…and desperate in her hope that her letter to Harry had the same effect on him.

Fleur had no reservations about playfully teasing her roommate over her reaction to this love letter. Hermione tried to put a stop to it by insisting that they take some time to actually work on Fleur's accent (even if it was no longer an issue at the bank). That worked for a little while.

The French witch didn't have any problem correctly pronouncing individual words in English…it was when she had to navigate multiple problem words, and multiple problematic sounds, where she would begin to stumble. Hermione decided that it might help if they made a game of it, taking alternating turns giving voice to made-up sentences. One would start by creating a short sentence that contained a single problem word. The other witch would respond by saying a sentence with two of those words…and then there would be three problem words in a sentence, and then four, and so on, until somebody messed up and miscounted. The only other rule was that each new sentence had to use at least one of the words from the previous sentence.

This was where Fleur found an opportunity to incorporate some good-natured teasing into Hermione's lesson's plans…

"You start this time," said Hermione.

Fleur nodded. "_Harry_."

Her roommate sighed. "You always start with that one."

Fleur shrugged.

"Fine," said Hermione. "_Harry_ attends _Hogwarts_."

"_Hermione hearts Harry_!"

"Oh…right, then. "Does _the house_ salad _have_ artichoke _hearts_?"

"Zat's only three!"

"No…that includes four," Hermione claimed. "Three letters that begin with the letter 'h', and _the _rather than _zee_."

Fleur sighed.

"Well, then…does _Hermione_ want to _hold Harry's huge hosepipe_?"

"No, Fleur, _Harry's hosepipe is_ kept _in his _pants, rather than _in the_ shed."

The French witch counted on her fingers.

"Ah hah! Zat has seven instead of six! I win!"

Hemione restated the sentence in her head, then sighed.

"Why am I the one that's losing this game?" she asked.

"Because you are being distracted by Harry's huge hosepipe?" Fleur quipped. "Because you weesh zat zee 'uge 'ousepipe was eenside your warm leetle 'ouse, and not een anyone else's shed?"

"Oh, stop it, Fleur," her roommate whined. "You're regressing"

"Alors….perhaps we must think up a different lesson, then?"

Hermione shrugged. "If you really want to tone down your accent…Merlin, Fleur…I'm a witch, not a linguist."

"Perhaps 'arry ees a cunning linguist?" Fleur asked.

In response to this horrible (and horribly overused) pun Hermione did three things in quick order. She snorted, she reached for a pillow, and she whacked Fleur on the head.

Fleur retaliated in kind, and the two witches started in on a rather intense pillow fight.

**oo00OO00oo**

A huge frown formed on Molly's face when Hermione and Fleur walked into the kitchen later that afternoon, wearing Muggle clothes and carrying small overnight bags.

"What are you two doing?" she demanded.

"We need to do some research," Hermione replied. "Like I said before, I'm a witch, and know little about teaching the English language. It would help me a lot if we got hold of some instruction manuals."

"And just how do you think you'll be doing this?"

"By visiting some Muggle libraries or Muggle bookstores?" Hermione asked. "It's our best option…I've never seen that sort of manual in a magical bookshop …have you?"

Molly shook her head. "Now why would I ever need to look for that sort of thing?"

Hermione shrugged. "I really want to help Fleur do whatever the Goblins want her to do…so that she can get back to work as soon as possible…don't you?"

"What are the bags for, then?"

"For the books," Hermione replied. "And…well, we might need to look at more than one place, and it'd be a lot quicker if my parents drove us from one public library or shopping area to another."

"So are you shopping, or visiting your parents?" Molly demanded.

Hermione sighed. "I know this is rather sudden, but…well, nobody could anticipate this morning's events, right? And if it takes a while to locate what we need, it would be easiest to just spend the night with my parents."

Molly frowned. "You two know that it's not safe out beyond the ward line."

Hermione nodded. "We realize that. But that doesn't stop Fleur from commuting back and forth to Gringotts, right? And if it weren't for my need to…well, you know…each day, I might still be at my parent's house."

The Weasley matriarch thought about the situation for a few moments. She didn't like the idea of letting either of the two witches do as they pleased, but…if they left right now, there would still be enough time to throw a roast into the oven, and invite Tonks to dinner before she started her nighttime shift on the ward line. That would give her son the chance to get to know the metamorph better without the French witch's interference. And Ginny would at the same time gain some quality time with Harry without Hermione's constant hovering.

Letting the two witches go for the weekend did nothing to improve Ron's chances with Hermione, but…that one was always going to be a longer-term project, given what Molly was working with. And when it came down to it…two out of three wasn't bad.

The Weasley matriarch nodded. "What time do you expect to return?"

"No later than dusk tomorrow, Fleur replied.

Molly was liking the idea more and more…a French-free Sunday dinner, in case Tonks couldn't make it that night.

"Right…off you go, then," she said. "Stay away from the Alley, and remember the rules about under-aged magic and spell casting amongst the Muggles.

"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley," Fleur replied. "We…_will_…remember…_those_…_things_."

"There, you see?" Hermione asked. "She's making progress on that accent already!"

"Where are you going, then?" Molly asked, as the two witches made their way to the back door.

"To _H_ermione's _h_ouse?" asked Fleur.

"Thought it safest if Fleur side-apparated me once we walked out past the wards," said Hermione. "If we avoid the floo, we can by-pass magical locations and travel straight to the Muggle world."

Molly chewed on her lower lip, then nodded.

"Say good-bye to Ron and Harry along the way, then," she instructed.

"Wouldn't dream of doing otherwise," Hermione replied brightly.

Fleur and Hermione once again found Harry and Ron in the backyard, playing ground-level Quidditch. "What's up, Hermione?" Harry asked, as Ron quickly abandoned his hoops and flew towards the other three teens.

"We wish to make our good-byes," Fleur announced.

"Your what?" Harry asked.

"Our good-byes," Fleur repeated, as she walked up to a hovering Ron, took him by the shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks.

When she released her grip on his shoulders, he released his grip on his broom…and promptly fell off.

"Oh…are you okay, Ronald?" Fleur asked.

"Just peachy," the red-haired wizard gushed as he lay flat on his back.

"Good," Fleur replied. "Zen, will you walk wiz me to zee ward line, so as to say good-bye?"

Ron thought this was a brilliant idea, and jumped up off the ground.

Harry was so busy watching this little scene play out that he didn't at first hear Hermione's whispering.

"Harry!" she said more loudly, as she tugged on his arm.

He turned, and asked, "What's going on, Hermione?"

"Walk with me, Sweetheart," she whispered, as she took a step towards the path that meandered through the orchard.

Harry looked over towards Fleur and a goofy-happy Ron, then glanced back towards Hermione . He made a decision, and rushed to catch up with his girlfriend.

She swatted away his hand when he did so.

"Not out in the open," she hissed.

Harry nodded, and looked back over his shoulder.

"What did Fleur just do to Ron?"

"Gave him a good-bye kiss?"

"Did she add a little of her zing to those kisses?"

"Would you be able to see his hands right now if she had?"

Harry shook his head and smiled.

"We shouldn't become over reliant on Fleur's special abilities," Hermione quietly stated. "Especially when she can induce that kind of euphoria without them."

"So why did she do that?"

"So that I can explain why we are saying our good-byes?" Hermione asked.

The Muggleborn witch quickly outlined Fleur's situation at the bank, and the plans that Hermione and she had subsequently made. The French witch gave them some privacy by walking behind them at a much slower pace, keeping Ron right by her side (and keeping him in a goofy-happy state by talking to him using an exaggerated accent).

Harry was happy that Fleur and Hermione were going to be able to escape the mad house, if only for a day. But he was also very disappointed that he was going to lose his girlfriend just a day after he had gotten her. Hermione understood completely, and…once they were deep enough into the orchard so as not to be seen, reached out and grabbed Harry's hand.

"Be a good boy, and maybe we'll bring presents back tomorrow," she purred, as she lifted up on her toes and planted a kiss on her boyfriend's lips.

"I don't need presents, baby…all I need is you!"

"Oh, Harry…we've got to work on your lines."

"Is that a complaint?" he pouted.

Hermione smiled, and placed another kiss on his lips.

"Not really," she admitted.

Hermione looked back down the path, and smiled when she spotted Fleur's back…the French witch was blocking Ron's view of them, which gave her enough confidence to pull Harry into a deep, open-mouthed, bum-grabbing snog.

He was more than happy to play along.

Twenty seconds later, Harry noticed that his girlfriend was reaching for something in her overnight bag, even as they continued to lock lips.

"What are you doing, Hermione?" he gasped, during the very short period of time in which his lips traveled from her lips to the nape of her neck.

"Hold…ah, got it!" she replied, pinching something in between thumb and forefinger.

Harry began to wonder when Hermione dragged the hand that had been squeezing his bum up to the back of his collar.

"What?"

"Hold still," she whispered, as she dropped whatever she'd just pulled from her bag down his neck.

"What did you just do?" he hissed, as he felt something squiggling underneath his robes.

"I just gave you a tape worm."

"A what?" Harry shouted, as he jumped out of Hermione's arms and started to rip open his robes.

"Relax, Harry….it's not going to hurt you."

"No? Then what _is_ it going to do, then?"

"Measure you, Silly," Hermione teased, as she stepped within arm's reach of her boyfriend.

"Now hold still," she instructed, pulling him back into a close embrace. "The charmed notebook in my bag has to be close enough to the worm to record your measurements."

"What measurements? And what for?"

"For your presents, of course," Hermione replied. "Gringotts gave Fleur a Muggle charge card loaded with two thousand pounds sterling, and she wants to go shopping."

"And…"

"And some of that shopping might be for you, silly."

"Me?"

"You can't deny that you could use a new wardrobe," Hermione stated. "At least more than just new knickers. And with your birthday coming up…."

Harry squirmed within in her arms, not at all comfortable with how the "tape worm" was going about its work.

"So these are clothes measurements?" he asked.

"That's right…why?"

"Because I don't think that the length and circumference of my….damn, that tickles…makes a difference!"

Hermione giggled, having felt through their close contact exactly where the tape worm had been taking measurements.

"Sorry, sweetheart…but no matter what they say, size does matter."

"Even when you're clothes shopping?"

Hermione laughed.

"Guess we covered those areas with the mail-order, huh?"

Harry relaxed just a bit once the magical measuring tape worm inched its way out of his robes, then tensed right back up when he felt it slip down a sock.

"Careful, Sweetheart, you wouldn't want to stomp on it before it records your shoe size!" Hermione gently chided.

Harry groaned in discomfort.

"So, when do you get your measurements taken?"

"When I'm at the store?"

"That hardly seems fair," Harry whined. "Besides, I bet this thing would be a lot more…thorough…and a lot more…intimate, then any Muggle sales clerk."

"Would you want them to be?"

"No, but…"

Hermione laughed, and gave his bum a squeeze.

"I'll make you a deal, then," she promised. "When we get back, we'll try to figure out a way to get you those details."

"Using this blasted tape worm?"

Hermione blushed. "Unless you'd rather take them yourself?"

Harry snorted.

"Now _that _would be a birthday present," he declared, as he reached down and picked the tape worm off of his shoe laces.

"Here you go," he offered.

"Thanks," Hermione replied, as she pulled the notebook from her bag and carefully pressed the flattened measuring device against the inside cover. "So, let's see how close I was to…yup, got your waistline and inseam right…pretty darn close on your collar size. Oh, well…I knew it was big but...?"

"What?" Harry asked.

Hermione looked up from the opened notebook, smiled, then snapped the cover shut.

"Never mind," she declared, using a sing-song voice.

There was still fifty meters distance between where the measurements had been taken and the ward line. Fleur managed to occupy Ron's attention well enough to allow Harry and Hermione to stroll hand and hand over that distance, and to stop next to the tree that she had hidden behind the day before. They christened the location with an extra-special going-away snog.

**oo00OO00oo**

When Gringotts' most promising young curse-breaker arrived home that evening, he was only slightly surprised to learn that Fleur and Hermione weren't there. Molly and Ginny tried to make it sound as if the two witches were going to go out and have a wild girls night out on the town, but he knew better, having gotten both a groveling apology and a copy of each letter while still at work. He guessed that if they made a night of it, that that night would be far more likely spent at a Muggle shopping centre than in some hedonistic den of iniquity.

Molly was disappointed when Tonks sent her regrets, and when Ginny spent more time talking to her Pygmy Puffs than to Harry. That didn't mean she hovered any less, though, so Bill had to work hard that night to find a few minutes of private time with Harry. In those brief minutes, he both delivered a letter and fleshed out a few details over what had taken place that day.

Harry liked the letter that Hermione had written very, very much. So much that he risked sending out an immediate reply, using Hedwig as his courier. The letter was delivered to Hermione's house in Weybridge just before she went to bed. Hedwig slept overnight in her bedroom as a second house guest.

Harry's familiar was too far away from the Burrow to pick up on (and subsequently broadcast) any of his feelings for his girlfriend. Not that it mattered, as he had conveyed those feelings with an amazing degree of clarity within the letter.

**oo00OO00oo**

Molly insisted that the Ministry of Magic could survive without her husband's services for at least one day a week, and told Arthur this in so many words. While he didn't protest, he also didn't waste any time heading out to his shed after Sunday brunch. Harry and Bill asked for a tour of the wizard's collection of Muggle bobbles, gizmos, and artifacts, so that they could escape from the kitchen just as fast (and as effectively) as Arthur did.

The two wizards grew instantly worried when Molly agreed that this was a splendid idea, explaining that she only needed Ginny and Ron to help her with the potions work that day. While Harry and Bill still lacked any direct evidence that Molly was slipping anyone love potions, and only had strong circumstantial evidence that she had even brewed Amortentia, it still made them nervous. They resolved to strengthen their vigilance, and to re-dose themselves with another vial of neutralizing agent.

The only chore that Molly had assigned to Bill and Harry that day was the de-gnoming of the garden. As Arthur showed the two younger wizards around his shed, Harry became inspired, and suggested that there might be a way to combine Mr. Weasley's passion with Mrs. Weasley's chores. The three spent the entire morning designing, and building, and arguing about the limits of and possible loopholes within the Muggle Protection Act. The outcome of this effort was wheeled out of the shed that afternoon.

Molly, Ron and Ginny were too busy inside the house to notice. Hermione and Fleur, however, were too out in the open not to notice when they crossed back inside the ward line early that evening, and found themselves within a series of concentric circles cut into the long grass.

It almost looked like a Muggle crop circle. That idea was quickly discarded, though, when they heard the screams of a garden gnome that was flying towards them along a ballistic flight path.

They ran for cover, then watched the garden gnome land head first on the bulls-eye. It was only after Hermione watched the gnome stand up and groggily scamper away that she kicked herself for the missed opportunity to yell, _"Run away! Run away!"_

**oo00OO00oo**

"Fire in the hole!"

"Gnome out of his hole!"

"Three-two-one… liftoff!"

"_Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"_

Harry Potter's eyes were drawn back down to earth by a different kind of screaming.

"Harry Potter! What the hell are you doing!" Hermione shouted from the far end of the field.

"Cease fire!" Harry yelled.

"Ceasing fire, Captain!" Bill quipped. The curse-breaker then turned to his father and added, "That means you can stop pedaling, Dad."

"Oh…right," Arthur replied.

"Looks like the girls made it home safely," Harry noted, as Hermione and Fleur marched directly towards their emplacement.

"Wouldn't it have been ironic if it wasn't until they got home that they got hurt?" asked Bill.

"I'm sure that they'd agree," Harry replied. He then called out, "Good evening, Ladies…have a nice stay in the Muggle world?"

"Don't you start with that," Hermione snapped, as Fleur and she closed the distance between them and the garden. "What do you think you're doing?"

Harry looked at Bill. Bill looked at his dad. Arthur looked towards Harry. They all three shrugged, and then they grinned.

"De-gnoming the garden?" Harry asked.

"Wiz zat…device?" Fleur asked.

Arthur nodded. "I'm afraid that it's my fault, girls," he admitted. "You see, I was showing these two my collection of Muggle artifacts, lamenting the fact that nothing I had in the shed really worked. So Harry was explaining what some of the pieces were used for, or could be used for with only minor modifications, and then Bill reminded Harry that they needed to de-gnome the garden, and well…"

"We invented the world's only bicycle-driven ballistic de-gnoming device," Harry said proudly.

"It is a rather ingenious tool," Arthur gushed. "To think that Muggles can do this sort of thing…"

"Yes, it is rather…ingenious," Fleur said with a laugh.

Hermione stared at the three wizards open-mouthed, then stared open-mouthed at what they had cobbled together. Mr. Weasley was sitting on a wheel-less bicycle frame, whose sprockets were connected to a series of gears that linked the bicycle to an over-sized tire pump. The pump tube was attached to the end of what appeared to be a clear plastic empty tennis ball canister…so long as the tennis was being played by giants. The seven-foot long, eight-inch diameter tube was connected to the canister via a series of intermediate valves and pistons and pulleys, and rested at a forty-five degree angle on the rear axle from a Muggle lorry.

Bill stood at the back end of this tube, with one hand on a valve and another holding a very squirmy gnome. Harry stood closer to the front of the device, holding what appeared to be the world's largest Q-tip cotton swab.

"How does this device work?" Fleur asked.

"That's great, honey…you said this instead of zis!"

"Thank you Bill…now, if you will answer my question?"

"Ah, right…we'd be happy to show them how it works, wouldn't we?" Bill asked the other two wizards.

"We'd be delighted to," said Arthur. Harry replied with a grin and another shrug.

"Right," Bill said. "First thing we need to do is clean out the barrel."

"Clean out the barrel!" said Arthur.

"Cleaning out the barrel!" Harry cried, as he pushed one end of the eight-foot long cotton swab into the end of the barrel, then pulled it back out.

"Ewww...looks like another one shat himself," the raven-haired wizard complained, once he examined the soiled fluffy swab at the end of the stick.

"No worries, Harry…still plenty left in the box," said Bill.

"Yup," the teenager agreed, throwing the dirty swab off to the side.

"I can't believe that you actually enlarged a box of Muggle Q-tips!" Hermione exclaimed.

Harry chuckled. "Hey, it could have been worse," he whispered. "Mr. Weasley had a Tampex box sitting on one of his shelves."

"Oh, that's just….."

"Yeah, I know," Harry agreed, as he walked over to a large clear container and pulled out another over-sized cotton swab.

"Load the launch device!" Arthur gleefully yelled.

"Loading the launch device!" Bill replied, as he walked up to the front of the canister and stuffed a gnome down feet-first.

"Loading the launch device," mimicked Harry, as he used one end of his enlarged swab to push the gnome down the length of the barrel. He then called out, "Prime the chamber!"

"Priming the chamber," said Bill, as he opened a few valves and closed a few others.

"Priming the chamber!" Arthur replied. He then began to peddle at a furious pace.

"It works like a compressed air gun," said Harry. "You know…like those things they use at Premier League football matches to launch t-shirts into the stands?"

"So the bicycle gears drive zee pumps, which push air into the back of zee canister…"

"Slow down, Fleur…you're slipping," said Hermione.

"Ah…sorry."

Bill smiled as he monitored the needle movement within a pressure gauge. He then said, "Yes, Fleur…that's exactly how it works….hold on, Dad…Chamber is primed!"

"Chamber is primed!" Harry shouted.

Arthur stopped peddling, took a deep breath, then replied, "Chamber is primed!"

"Permission to fire, Captain?" Bill asked.

Harry looked downrange and nodded.

"You may fire at will, Bill."

"Fire in the hole!"

"Gnome out of his hole!"

"Three-two-one…liftoff!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Harry laughed as he watched the garden gnome sail through the air and land in the middle of their home-made target.

"This is too much fun," he decided.

"Well, I'm glad that you didn't decide to skiv off in my absence," Hermione muttered.

"I didn't!" Harry protested. "This is serious work!"

"Yeah, I can tell."

"But Mum really did tell us to de-gnome the garden," said Bill.

Fleur noticed a small pile of ripe melons sitting next to the improvised cannon and snorted.

"I am certain that she did," she stated.

"And that's not the only reason for building this," added Harry. "It's research and development!"

"For what…the next great Magical circus trick?" Hermione quipped.

"No, no…I'm serious," said Harry. "We're going to add this to the Burrow's perimeter defense system…right Mr. Weasley?"

"That's right, Hermione," the older wizard agreed. "If we can launch a gnome that far into the air…just imagine what this device could do if we were attacked!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "So, instead of releasing the tiger, you release the gnome!"

"Nah…that's just killing two birds with one stone," Harry claimed. "Had to get rid of the gnomes anyway. Once we've figured out how to accurately aim this thing, and set up some kind of forward observer post to call in adjustments…well, imagine what this could do if a bunch of Death Eaters showed up one night and started to overpower the ward line?"

"Or stood outside the line and took the time to set up their own overlapping wards," added Bill. "That'd take at least a couple of minutes, and once they got through the lines almost as much time before they got within range of their wand fire. Plenty of time for us to aim this device and start lobbing things their way."

"Yeah…things other than gnomes," said Harry.

"Fetchez la vache?" Fleur asked.

"Nah…we'll need to build a catapult for that," said Harry. "We've only started to brainstorm…canisters of silver grapeshot if we're up against a pack of werewolves, for example."

"Or a container filled with magical laughing gas…or Peruvian Instant Blackness Powder."

"Or a dung bomb," added Arthur.

"That doesn't sound very damaging," said Hermione.

"It might be if you're using Nundu dung."

Hermione sighed. "But how is any of this even legal?" she asked. "You should know about the Muggle Protection Act better than anyone, Mr. Weasley."

"I think that I do know it better than anyone else," Arthur replied. "Which is why I'm quite certain that we're in the clear."

"But…you magically enlarged Q-tips. And enlarged a tennis ball canister. And you certainly had to have hardened the plastic, or else the barrel would have exploded in your face!"

"Yes, we did all that, Hermione…but we didn't enchant any of those pieces…we just changed their physical properties."

"But what about the gnomes?"

"No harm, no foul?"

"I think that they actually enjoy it!" added Bill. "I've seen at least one of them running back so that they could get caught and launched again."

Hermione frowned. She was certain that there had to be something illegal about the device, but if Mr. Weasley wasn't worried…and if the boys were finding ways to have fun despite the dark days…and if there was even a chance that the cannon might turn into another layer of defense…

The Muggleborn witch let her overnight bag slip off of her shoulder and drop to the ground. Then she kicked the rubber tire attached to the lorry axle, and asked, "So just how easy is it to mobilize this bad boy? Have you considered mounting it on rotating platform? Figured out how to account for varying wind velocities? What kind of magical friction-reducing efficiencies have you applied to the pumps?"

Harry smiled as he wrapped his arm around Hermione.

"That's my girl!" he exclaimed, leaning a "friendly" head onto her shoulder.

"I'm glad that you're back," he whispered.

Hermione smiled, and kissed the top of Harry's head.

"I'm glad to be back."

The group spent the next couple of hours brainstorming and gnome throwing. Nobody was all that eager to head inside the house…whether it was because they were having too much fun, or because they were expecting the Spanish Inquisition once they did…or both. When they finally did venture in for dinner, they did so as a pack, which went a long ways towards diffusing Molly's interrogative attacks.

**oo00OO00oo**

The next morning, Harry chuckled when Hedwig swiveled her head away from an offered ration of bacon, and converted it into take-away.

"She's coming, huh girl?" he asked.

"Bark!" Hedwig replied.

"You know I meant down the stairs," Harry whispered.

Hedwig turned her head from side to side, then launched herself out the opened window and into light rain.

"Bill and I should be going as well," Arthur stated, as he gave his wife a good-bye kiss. The curse-breaker squeezed Harry's shoulder, then nodded towards his brother and sister.

"Stay out of trouble, you three," he said.

"I'll ask the same of you, William," Molly said.

Bill chuckled as Fleur emerged from the stairs and pulled him into a good-sized good-bye kiss.

"Too late," Ginny muttered as Hermione appeared and her oldest brother followed her father out the floo.

"Good morning, ladies," Harry said cheerfully, as his girlfriend and her roommate sat opposite him at the table.

Fleur smiled and deliberately said, "How are you today….Harry?"

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Hey, you got the 'h's' right!" Ron exclaimed (failing to note the irony behind the fact that his chewing-impinged comment was itself barely decipherable).

"Sounds good, Fleur," Harry added warmly (and more clearly).

The French witch smiled. "Thank you…Harry. Hermione has been a big help."

"Oh, I haven't done much at all," the Muggleborn witch declared. "Fleur was up most of the night practicing with her new phrasebook."

"That...is…an...exaggeration," Fleur declared.

"A phrasebook?" asked Harry. "I thought you already knew the words…that it was more about the pronunciation?"

"Yes, and yes," Hermione replied. "She's doing great when she really slows down and thinks about each word as she says it."

"But I need to say certain everyday phrases at normal conversation speeds," Fleur agreed. "So I have been practicing…_the_… phrases until I can say…_them_…without…_thinking_."

"Like what?" asked Ginny, deciding to finally join the conversation.

"There is a cart waiting to take you to your vault, Sir," Fleur replied (in perfect English). "Also, 'please return to the queue,' and 'my hovercraft is full of eels'."

"Ah…work-related then?" Harry asked with a laugh.

Fleur smiled in agreement. "Yes, but also what I use in everyday conversation. Phrases like, "You look very happy, Harry...Have you eaten Hermione?"

Harry choked on his toast.

"You should slow down when you eat, Mate," said Ron, as he slapped his friend on the back.

"I'm okay," the raven-haired teen protested. He then turned towards Fleur and asked, "There is a comma somewhere in that last phrase, right?"

"A comma?"

"You were asking Hermione if _she _had eaten, right?" Harry asked.

"Of course!" Fleur replied. She turned towards Hermione and asked, "Did I say…_it_…wrong?"

The bushy-haired witch looked towards Harry and rolled her eyes.

"Yes, you said it correctly," she replied. "Harry is just trying to be funny."

"Oh," said Fleur innocently, showing that she knew perfectly well what she said and how it could have been taken. She smiled, and added, "Then I must say 'Ha Ha Ha', no?"

"No, don't…it will only encourage him," Hermione replied, reaching over the table to lightly tap her boyfriend's arm. She then said, "We need your help Harry, so be nice."

The-Boy-Who-Lived grinned. "Of course…what can I do?"

"We need you to be Fleur's conversation partner."

"Her what?" Molly asked from across the kitchen.

"Her conversation partner," Hermione repeated. "Someone who can help Fleur with her accent in conversational settings."

"But I thought that's what you were supposed to be doing?" Ginny asked.

The Muggleborn witch nodded. "I am helping…but I can't help in this situation."

"Why is that?"

"Because I am nearly fluent in French," Hermione replied. "When Fleur and I are in our room talking to each other, half of the time it is half in French, and half in English. Sometimes we mix the two together without even recognizing what we're doing."

"Even…in…the…same sentence," the French witch added.

"It's not intentional," Hermione explained. "But it does mean that sometimes I don't notice when she slips in the odd French word or phrase."

"So she needs to talk with someone who doesn't understand that language, then, and corrects her when she does?" Molly asked.

"That's right," said Hermione. "Bill can't do it, since he speaks French…Harry would be perfect."

Molly frowned. "Ginny doesn't speak French."

"That's true," Hermione replied. "But I think it will be more helpful if it was a wizard. You know, because it was a wizard that complained about her accent in the bank?"

The Weasley Matriarch nodded, accepting the assertion without examining the underlying shaky wizard's logic (just as Hermione had assumed she would).

"Ron, then," she decided.

The red-haired wizard perked up at the suggestion, but Hermione and Fleur had also planned for this contingency.

"Yes, Ron is a wizard who doesn't speak French, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione agreed. "But…it's just that…well, sometimes some wizards get a little flustered when they talk with Fleur…they find it hard to concentrate on what she says."

"What do you mean?" asked Ron. "I can understand her good enough, and know proper English!"

Ginny rolled her eyes, knowing full well what Hermione was suggesting.

Molly was persistent. "Ronald is just as qualified as Harry, and Harry is in the middle of brewing some very important potions," she declared.

Hermione sighed as she pulled two self-inking quills and pieces of parchment from her robe pocket. "Perhaps we can do a quick test?" she asked.

"What kind of test?" Ron asked.

"I'll have Fleur say a phrase using her French accent," Hermione explained. "Harry and Ron will then each write down what she should have said, pointing out any missteps. And then we'll compare."

Molly pursed her lips as she wiped her hands with a kitchen towel. "Alright, then," she decided.

Hermione nodded, then turned and whispered something into Fleur's ear. The French witch's eyes lit up in delight.

"Ready, then?" she asked.

When the two teen-aged wizards both nodded, Fleur leaned towards them and purred.

"Zese are not zee droids zat you are looking for!"

Harry stifled a snort, then picked up his quill and started to write.

Ron just stared blankly at the French witch.

Hermione sighed. "Would either of you like to hear the phrase again?"

"I'm good," Harry declared.

"Yes, please!" Ron asked.

Fleur smiled, and leaned closer to Ron. Staring directly into his eyes, she then repeated the statement.

Ron stared blankly at her for a moment, then looked down at his quill. He picked it up, started to write out a word, then let the quill slip from his fingers.

"Urm…sorry. Got to go," he stammered, pushing away from the table.

Hermione tried not to giggle too hard as Ron bolted up the stairs in search of some privacy.

Harry held up his piece of parchment for inspection.

"How did I do, then?"

The four witches were quick to confirm the accuracy of his corrective phrase.

"Oh, but that's so not fair!" Ginny whined. "Fleur cheated!"

"How could she have done that?" Hermione asked.

"Well, she's obviously befuddled Ron on purpose!"

"I wasn't befuddled, though," Harry noted.

"Yeah, well…she wasn't staring into your eyes," said Ginny, as she sat down at what had been Ron's spot on the bench next to Harry. "Or leaning towards you either, showing off her…charms."

Fleur glared across the table towards Ginny. "I would not dream of showing my fiance's brother any of my…charms."

"You don't have to dream about it…it just comes naturally," the younger witch snarked.

"Right then, how about another test?" Hermione asked. "Fleur will say something while leaning towards Harry, and looking directly into _his _eyes."

"Oh, zees ees a good idea!" Fleur declared.

"You should have said that _it is_ a good idea, Fleur," Harry stated.

"Hey…I didn't see any eye contact!" Ginny protested. "And it wasn't the same kind of racy-sounding phrase."

"Droids are racy-sounding?" Harry asked.

Hermione sighed. "Okay, fine. Molly?"

"Yes, Dear?"

"Would you agree that it would be a fair test if Ginny comes up with the phrase, then writes it down and passes it to Fleur for her to read?"

"While she is looking into Harry's eyes and leaning towards him?" added the red-haired teen.

"Yes, just like that," Hermione agreed.

Molly took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out.

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Right, then," said Ginny, as she grabbed the quill and parchment that Ron had been too befuddled to use. "Let's see…."

The red-haired witch nibbled on the end of the quill as she considered a suitably devious phrase. She smiled when it came to mind, then glanced towards her mother. She thought for a moment, then reached a decision and wrote the phrase down. Ginny then folded the paper, and pushed it down the table towards Fleur. When the French witch opened the fold and read the phrase she snorted in amusement.

Hermione leaned over to look at what the younger witch had written, and shook her head.

"That's not a fair test," she declared.

"Why not?" Ginny challenged.

"Because zere are no problems een asking, '_Do you want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy_!"

"Bill might have a problem with it," Hermione noted.

"Ginny!" Molly scolded.

"It wasn't supposed to be real question," she protested. "It was just a test phrase."

"It was also a practice phrase that didn't contain any of the problem sounds," Hermione stated. "Want to try again?"

Ginny let out a huge huff of air, and violently snatched the parchment back. She crossed her first sentence with a thick black line, then paused to angrily conjure a better sentence.

"Let's try this one, then," she snapped, as she wrote a sentence with violent strokes of the quill. An evil grin formed on her lips as she tossed the refolded piece of paper down onto the table.

"I'll have that!" Molly demanded, swooping down and snatching up the parchment.

Ginny gasped, her anger and desire for victory having caused her to momentarily forget that her mother was in the room.

"I only wrote that for the test," said, as her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "Doesn't mean that I would ever say…."

"I don't want to hear it!" Molly snapped, her own cheeks reddening as she reread the test question. "Ginevra Weasley, you and I are going to have a long talk once we're through here!"

"Yes, Mum," the girl said glumly. "Should I try again, then?"

Molly glared at her daughter, then glared at the note in her hand. She took three or four deep breaths as she considered her options. Then she took one last full breath and folded the parchment in half.

"I don't ever want to hear this sort of question being asked in my house…whether it's by my daughter or by a houseguest!" she hissed. Molly then walked over to Fleur, and handed her the note. "However…so long as it is just a test…I'll allow it…just this once, mind you."

Fleur's eyes widened when she read the new phrase. She silently passed the note to Hermione, who snorted out loud when she read it.

"Really, Ginny?" the Muggleborn whined.

"It has words she trips over all the time," the younger witch said defiantly.

"It also has words that…"

"Hey, don't give Harry any clues!"

Hermione sighed as she cast an inquisitive glance towards Molly. She wondered what sort of game the matriarch thought she was playing, then shrugged and handed the folded parchment back to Fleur.

"We should switch places, so that you're directly across from Harry when you ask."

"Are you certain?"

"Yeah…If Ginny wants to make it that _hard_ for him…then make it hard."

"Vraiment?" Fleur asked.

"Yes, really," Hermione concluded, as she got up from the table

Fleur arched an eyebrow as she read her roommate's facial expression. Then she nodded, scooted down the bench to take the place that her roommate had just vacated, and began to unbutton the front of her robes.

"What are you doing?" Molly demanded.

"So zat zere ees no doubt," the part-Veela announced.

"Fleur?" Harry asked nervously.

"As Molly sez…zees ees only a test," she stated.

Once Fleur had unbuttoned the top four buttons on her robes she loosened the widened neckline and pushed the tops of her robes just off of her shoulders. This revealed a black lace bra, a wide expanse of tan skin, and a healthy amount of cleavage.

A slight gurgling sound escaped from Molly's clenched teeth as Fleur pushed the breakfast dishes to the side and rested her arms on the kitchen table. She then leaned towards Harry, bending far enough to rest her weight (and her bra-covered breasts) on her forearms.

Hermione's boyfriend kept eye contact with her roommate…until her roommate broke eye contact to address the red-haired witch that was sitting next to him.

"Ees zees ze way you want eet, Ginny?" Fleur purred, in a very sexy tone of voice. The French witch then re-established eye-contact with Harry and added, "Am I leaning towards 'im and looking at 'im een zee eyes?"

"Yeah, yeah…get on with it."

Fleur nodded, then asked what had been written.

"Do you zeenk zat I 'ave beeg teets, 'Arry?"

Harry held the part-Veela's gaze for five silent seconds…then began to laugh. Fleur started to laugh as well, which made her jiggle and offer up even more of a view…which he neglected to take.

A wide smile formed on Hermione's lips as her nagging fears were proven unwarranted. It was a rather triumphal smile.

Ginny frowned, and grasped for straws. She nudged the wizard sitting next to her with an elbow, then asked, "Something wrong? You aren't writing anything down!"

The teen-aged wizard turned his head towards the red-haired witch and snorted.

"Nope, everything is fine."

"I bet you think so," Ginny snarked. She glanced across the table and said, "Hey, Fleur, I think he needs to hear that phrase again!"

The French witch nodded as she reached out, touched Harry's cheek, and guided his gaze back towards her face.

"Do you need to hear it again, Harry?" she asked, carefully enunciating each word.

"No, thanks," he replied, as his eyes darted down to his quill and parchment. While he began to write out the question, everyone else's attention was diverted towards the stairs, and to the sound of barreling steps.

Ron burst into the kitchen and asked. "So what did I miss?"

His eyes were quickly drawn towards Fleur's chest. He let out a loud moan and said, "Sweet Morgana's…"

"Ronald!" Molly shouted.

The admonishment shook the red-haired teen out of his visual ensnarement. When he looked towards his mother and saw the anger in her eyes, he winced, turned tail, and fled back upstairs.

Harry set the quill down on the table. He reread what he had just written, then decided he should fold his parchment in half.

"Erm…right. I'm not going to get into trouble for writing that down, am I?"

Molly looked towards him and sighed.

"Give it to me," she said, holding out her hand. The Weasley Matriarch then glanced towards Fleur and shouted, "And button yourself up!"

"Yes, Ma'am," Fleur said very seriously, quickly complying with the demand.

When Harry placed the folded parchment in Molly's hand, quickly opened it, silently read it, then not-so-silently vanished it.

"Fine," she hissed. "Harry, go be Fleur's…partner. I suppose you want to monitor their work, Hermione?"

"If that's alright, Mrs. Weasley?"

Molly nodded tersely. "Just do it in the sitting room, where I can listen in on these…lessons."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"There's not going to be any more of these scandalous questions?"

"No, Ma'am…of course not, Ma'am," Harry said, as he dashed towards the other room.

Hermione and Fleur followed at a more sedate pace, while Molly began shouting at Ginny about her behavior. By the time they caught up to him, the red-haired witch had been sent outside to muck out the chicken coop.

Harry stopped when he got to the couch, but didn't sit down, and he didn't turn to face the two witches.

"Harry?" Hermione whispered. "Something wrong?"

"Erm…just a second!" he whispered back, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Hermione took a step towards her boyfriend, only to be held back by her roommate.

"_**Arrete**__!"_ Fleur whispered, glancing back towards the entrance to the kitchen.

Hermione stopped, then looked back at the French witch and asked an unvoiced question with her eyes.

"Ronald?" Molly bellowed. "What are you doing up there?"

Fleur smiled as she heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.

"So, Harry…why the reaction now?" she asked.

"What?" he asked.

"Oh, 'Arry…eet ees just us, n'est-ce pas?" Fleur asked.

"It should be '_Oh, Harry it is just us_', and you don't need that last part," he replied.

"Can somebody start explaining what's going?" Hermione hissed.

Fleur nodded as she pulled Hermione towards the couch, spun Harry around, and pointed.

He let out a groan of frustration, deciding there was no point in covering his tent with his hands.

"It wasn't anything that you said, Fleur," he insisted. "It was Molly."

Hermione snorted. "Did you just hear what you just said?"

Harry replayed his statement in his head, then rolled his eyes.

"Thanks, Hermione," he whined. He fell back onto the couch, gestured towards his waist, and said, "You just took care of that problem."

"Erm…okay?"

"What I said was true…it's just not as bad as it sounds," he explained, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Molly told us to go do it in the sitting room."

"So…"

"So that got me thinking about how _you_ 'did it' in the sitting room on my first night here."

Hermione started to blush, then decided she really had no reason to do so. Instead, she smiled.

"So that's what got you hard, Harry?" she whispered. "Nothing to do with Fleur's question?"

"Zat ees exactly what my nose sez, 'Ermione."

"You mean that is exactly what your nose says," said Harry.

"Sorry…eet ees hard for me to concentrate on zee words when…"

The sounds of Molly's bellowing drifted into the room, as she demanded that her son open up the bathroom door.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Harry quipped, shaking his head in amazement at what had all just happened. "Why do you think that she let that question be asked?"

Fleur shrugged. "I do not presume to know what goes on eenside 'er 'ead."

Hermione looked at Harry, then at her roommate, then back towards the kitchen.

"Can we worry about that later?" she whispered. "And Fleur…would you mind watching that door for a minute?"

"Bien sur!" the French witch said with a wink.

The Muggleborn witch shot Harry a predatory smile as Fleur walked across the room to stand guard.

Harry arched an eyebrow.

"I think you should be rewarded for passing that boyfriend test…don't you?" she asked.

Harry chuckled and shrugged. "If it was a matter of skin…saw far more of Fleur on the beach then I just did in the kitchen, didn't I?"

Hermione shook her head in disbelief.

"Are you saying that you don't want your reward?"

"Oh, erm, no…rewards are good!" Harry whispered.

"Good," said Hermione, as dropped her knees onto the couch cushions and straddled his hips.

Harry gasped while she squirmed and ground against his lap. Looking nervously over Hermione's shoulder, he said, "Maybe that's not a…. Fleur's not there?"

Hermione looked over her shoulder…then let out a sigh…then slipped off Harry's lap.

"I suppose," she whined, as she sat down next to her boyfriend and scooted to create some distance.

A few moments later Fleur re-entered the sitting room with a satisfied smile on her face.

"Now you two should have _more_ zan a few minutes," she said, leaning back against the threshold.

"Now?" Hermione asked. "What did you just…?"

"Please don't ask her that," Harry begged, mentally cringing at the possibilities.

Hermione thought for a moment, then decided that was a reasonable request. Then she stopped all of Harry's mental cringing in its tracks by swinging her leg back over his lap and settling down.

"Comfortable?" he asked.

"Erm…yes," she replied, squirming against his thighs just to be sure. The Muggleborn witch then smiled as she reached out and tussled Harry's hair.

"You never actually answered the question, did you?"

"What questi…oh, right," he replied. "Didn't think I needed to."

"Why's that?"

"Are you serious?"

Hermione snorted. "Humor me, Harry."

"Fine…I've delegated the task of answering that question to my liegeman."

"Good answer," Hermione whispered, as she leaned forward and placed a tender kiss on his lips.

After a short while, she pulled back, and asked, "So, will Bill answer that question for whenever any girl asks if her tits are too big…or just when Fleur asks?"

Harry smiled, and replied, "Just Fleur."

"Another good answer!" Hermione whispered. She then leaned back, and ripped open the front of _her _robes.

The distinctive sound created when strips of Muggle Velcro are separated was heard by Harry's ears, but not recognized for what it was until much, much later. His eyes (and most of his higher brain functions) had zeroed in on the lace-trimmed bra that Hermione had just exposed underneath her robes.

She shimmied, then coyly asked, "So, Harry…do you think that _my_ tits are too big?"

Her boyfriend chuckled, showing no caution at all as he leaned forward to examine the evidence.

"They look just the right size to me," he replied. "Although…."

"Yes, Harry?"

"You've always encouraged me to review my assignments and revise as necessary, right?"

Hermione giggled, and risked a glance back over her shoulder. Fleur was still was giving the couple a "thumbs up" sign.

"Would you like to gather more evidence to test that hypothesis?" she asked, running fingers through her boyfriend's hair.

"Huh?"

Hermione chuckled as she pushed Harry's head back, then pulled Harry's hands forward, towards her chest.

"Why don't you _feel_ if my tits are too big?" she asked.

Harry snorted. "Language, sweetheart."

"Really?"

"No…it's just that…what happened to the clinical language?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Do you want to debate me, Harry…or fondle me?"

That was a silly question.

For forty-five glorious seconds, they snogged, he groped, and she ground down on his lap.

"Fais gaffe!"

Hermione gasped when she heard Fleur's warning, and immediately bounced off of the couch. After quickly tucking herself back in, she Velcro'ed herself back up. Harry, meanwhile, was desperately trying to readjust his robes. By the time he decided that he'd done the best he could do, he looked up and noticed that Hermione had moved to the far corner of the room, and was now sitting on a high-backed chair.

She smiled, leaned forward, and cleared her throat.

"So, Harry…your job is to engage Fleur in conversation that will force her into using some of those words that she has problems with in a natural setting."

The-Boy-Who-Lived nodded as he watched Fleur pull out her wand, cross the room towards Hermione, and cast a whispered charm towards her.

"_Praetego!"_

"Do you see what I'm thinking, Harry?" Hermione then asked.

The teen-aged wizard snorted at the double entendre…Fleur's spell work had smoothed out the perky points in the front of Hermione's robes.

"Yes, I do," he replied, even while his head was shaking "No."

Harry glanced towards the empty doorway, then gestured towards his crotch.

Fleur giggled as she quietly padded across the room, cast a second _Praetego_ charm, then plopped down onto the couch next to him.

Molly entered room a few moments later and frowned as she looked around.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley," the three droned.

The matriarch turned towards Hermione and asked, "What are you doing over there?"

The Muggleborn witch smiled as she ran her fingers down the length of one of the chair arms.

"I didn't want to be a distraction," she explained. Hermione then turned her attention to Fleur and asked, "Ready for some more warm-up exercises?"

"Oui!"

"You mean '_yes_'," Harry corrected.

"Ah…yes. Thank you..._H_arry."

"Repeat after me, then," said Hermione. "It is hot today, Harry…isn't it?"

Fleur smiled, and repeated the phrase. She then recited generic statements about happy housewives, big wigs, and thorny thickets.

Molly watched the back and forth for a few moments, then grew bored and retreated into the kitchen. Hermione gave the other two teens a big "thumbs-up" gesture once she was out of the matriarch's field of view.

"Alright, let's do one last exercise that combines the different sounds," the Muggleborn instructed.

"Okay," said Fleur.

Hermione smiled seductively as she lifted one of her legs over the arm of her chair and leaned back against the cushion. "Listen carefully," she said, slowly dragging the heel of one hand from her shoulder, across her chest, then down into her lap.

"Harry, do you think that this is where Hermione was sitting that night?"

Harry sucked in a sharp breath when he heard his girlfriend ask the question-slash-confession. At that same moment, Fleur was holding in a deep breath, so that she didn't give up the game to Molly by laughing out loud.

"'Arry?" the French witch asked.

"It's Harry," he mumbled.

"Sorry…so, Harry…do you think that this is where 'Ermione was sitting zat night?"

"Erm, no," he replied, watching Hermione nod her head vigorously.

"No?"

"No, erm…Fleur…that is where _Hermione_ was sitting _that_ night."

"That's right, Harry," teased Hermione. "_This_. Is. Where."

The sound of pots and pans clanking against each other in the kitchen caught the Muggleborn's attention. She quickly pulled her leg back, sat up straight, and schooled her facial expression.

Harry sat up as well. Then he readjusted the position of the tent pole that no one else could see, so that he might relieve some of the uncomfortable pressure that no one else could feel.


	7. Chapter 7: Innocents Abroad?

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: ** Thanks to everyone from the Seel'vor group that helped beta a draft version of this update.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 7: Innocents Abroad?**

**oo00OO00oo **

It was dangerous thing for a Gringotts employee to let his mind wander while he was sitting in a Senior Manager's office…especially when that Senior Manager had a wall-mounted steel-spiked mace that was within reach of his desk. But it was almost impossible for Bill to maintain a sharp mental focus when the possibilities just seemed to leap off the ledger page…

"Does one of the client's properties catch your knife-edge, Mr. Weasley?"

Bill quickly glanced up at Chokebar and nodded.

"Yes, Senior Account Manager," he replied in Gobbledegook (as was customary during their meetings). "There are at least three properties that appear…at least on parchment…to have the type of magical protections required given the client's security needs. But without actually visiting these properties myself…"

"That could be arranged, you know."

Bill's eyebrows arched upwards. "My apologies, Senior Account Manager," he said. "I was under the impression that it was only after the client assumed his rank and made me his liegeman that I could act in that capacity."

Chokebar's eyes danced with either danger or delight (Bill still couldn't tell, which was both exasperating and unnerving).

The goblin asked, "Are you or are you not employed by the same institution that has provided property management services to this client's House for all these years?" He nodded towards the ledger book that was opened in front of Bill and added, "Pick three and we'll have the portkeys crafted in time for you to make your inspections this afternoon."

The red-haired curse breaker, knowing that time was money, quickly called out his selections. He then asked, "Are there any differences in the amount of time that it would take to have these properties ready for client occupancy?"

The Potter Account Manager shook his head.

"Each property has been maintained by house-elf caretaker," he stated. "They are all in a condition suitable for human habitation. Of course, with a day or two advanced notice a full staff could be mustered that would make the conditions even more suitable."

Bill nodded in understanding. That the Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter still owned house elves had been a revelation. It had also become a concern, given his knowledge of Hermione's crusade.

"There is time, then," he stated. "Still nine days until the client's birthday. And even then, there is a possibility that he might decide to stay put for the balance of his holiday."

Chokebar twisted his ear hairs as he considered this response.

"Have you discussed this with the client?" he asked.

"Not in any great detail," Bill replied. "He has mentioned his belief that there are positives and negatives to both staying and going once he is positioned to make that decision."

"Elaborate."

Bill was nonplussed by the terse command.

"My mother is acting as Dumbledore's surrogate," he observed. "The Headmaster's confidence in her ability to keep the client on a very short leash allows the old man to turn his attentions elsewhere. The client is worried that Dumbledore will try to reassert direct control just as soon as he assumes his title, and when that happens..."

Chokebar snorted, and declared, "Better the demoness that you know, then? Was this cogent analysis arrived at independently?"

Bill smiled and shook his head. "I believe he has gotten some input on the matter from his other close advisor."

"Ah, yes…our newest vault owner," Chokebar agreed. "I suppose that the client can't just throw the girl into his cart and call it a honeymoon?"

Bill chuckled. "Yes, Senior Account Manager."

"Well, then…I ask that you keep their minds at least open to the possibility of the client assuming his duties on the thirty-first. The earlier the title is taken, the greater the profit…for both Gringotts and the client."

"Yes, Senior Account Manager."

Chokebar leaned back on his desk chair and idly polished one of his vest buttons.

"These meetings have been satisfactory," he stated. "I will miss them once you return to The House of Greed in September."

Bill bowed his head in response to this complement. "I am honored, Senior Account Manager."

The Potter Account Manager pulled out a charmed timepiece and nodded.

"In thirty minutes time you are to reward Curse Breaker Johnson's apprentice by bringing him to the canteen for lunch," he stated.

Bill reined in his shock at this request.

Chokebar didn't have to explain his orders, but was in a good enough mood to do so any way.

"The apprentice kept Johnson from joining your Hall of Fame this morning."

"Aaaaah…yes, Senior Account Manager. I understand. You said the curse-breaker's canteen, Senior Account Manager?"

The goblin bared his teeth. "They won't give you any trouble…if they know what's good for them."

Bill Weasley wasn't too certain about this statement. But he was certain what the correct response was in this situation.

"Yes, Senior Account Manager. I'd be happy to complete the assigned task, Senior Account Manager…"

**oo00OO00oo An Expository Interlude oo00OO00oo **

The first wizard employees at Gringotts were Thirteenth-Century curse breakers, hired to be the public face of tomb-raiding expeditions within or on the fringe of the Muggle world, and to deal with those wards and traps that could only be handled with a wizard's magic. This was long before there even was a "Gringotts Wizarding Bank" set up to handle the wizarding world's finances. The curse breakers worked for a goblin-run bank run exclusively for goblin customers…a bank whose name (when faithfully translated from the original Gobbleygook) was "Gringotts House of Greed." This small group of wizards (and their successors over the years) were a rough and rugged lot who worked and played by Goblin rules. They were all fluent in Gobbledegook, and formed friendships within their group and with their Goblin co-workers…close relationships forged with blood and trust out in the field.

When the Ministry of Magic ceded control of its monetary policy to the Goblins under The Treaty of 1865, a separate arm of the institution was established and called "Gringotts Wizarding Bank." The Goblins built a gleaming white-marble above-ground building in Diagon Alley to service their human customers, and staffed that office with both goblins and new human employees. These were distasteful, but necessary, hires…there weren't enough English-speaking Goblins (or those willing to learn), and even fewer who were willing to spend the majority of their work day aboveground. And certain jobs, like those that required face-to-face meetings with Muggles, could only be done by a witch or wizard.

The curse-breaking wizards who were still employed by the "House of Greed" division of Gringotts held just as much disdain for their new human colleagues as did their goblin colleagues. They considered the newbies that worked for the Wizarding Bank to be soft…incompetents who couldn't be bothered to learn Gobbledegook, or to do anything more adventurous than asking their goblin managers to approve a new loan application. And while there were ward crafters and curse breakers employed by the Wizarding side of Gringotts, the range of services that they offered were just as boring and routine as their clients…little old witches who had magically locked themselves out of their homes, or businesses that needed their warding schemes tweaked.

Not that there was that much interaction between the two groups of human employees….tomb-raiding expeditions kept the "House of Greed" curse breakers out of country for weeks and months at a time. When they were back in Britain, and in between jobs, they kept to themselves, and rarely inter-acted with the human "wiz-bang" (i.e. Wizarding Bank) employees. They had their own clubhouse/canteen off in one corner of a near-surface floor of the bank, and while there weren't any admissions restrictions, it was perfectly clear just who was and who wasn't welcomed. And if the admissions policies weren't clear enough, well…the canteen's patrons weren't at all afraid of doing a bit of educating.

Bill Weasley had accepted a temporary reassignment from the House of Greed into the Wizarding Bank at the start of the summer. This job transfer kept him in Britain, and gave him the opportunity to learn the kind of financial management and client management skills that the bank's liaison with one of their most profitable accounts should have. His curse breaking colleagues at the House of Greed considered it a shameful demotion, and the need for discretion kept Bill from being able to explain why the temporary transfer had been necessary. Not wanting to invite trouble, he had steered clear of the curse breaker's canteen since the reassignment…right up to the moment when he was ordered not to steer clear.

**oo00OO00oo **

"Right, so…just as a heads up?" Bill said, as he approached the canteen's entrance. "This is where the House of Greed curse breakers hang out…they spend most of their time roughing it out on expeditions, so they can be a little…rough around the edges, and rather coarse in their comments."

"I understand, Mr. Weasley," the younger wizard replied. "So, speak only when spoken to?"

"That will do just fine," said Bill. "And stop with the Mr. Weasley business…makes me sound like my old man!"

"Yes, Sir."

"And stop with calling me…oh, right. Having me on, then?"

The younger wizard chuckled. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said. "I've heard the stories, and know well enough that my hiring has more to do with who I am than what I can do…"

"No worries," Bill replied. "Sounds like you did good today… you deserve a chance to broaden your job horizons a bit."

"If you say so, Sir."

Bill rolled his eyes as he ushered the apprentice inside the canteen.

It was a dimly-lit, low-ceilinged room that stank of pipe smoke and sarcophagi. A vintage Muggle jukebox was playing a harsh-sounding goblin-sung tune that a Muggleborn might have mistaken for Klingon opera. Dangerous-looking men sat at square wooden tables that were scattered around the space, carrying on boisterous and bawdy conversations as they ate dangerous-looking food. Most of these conversations died-off when Bill and the apprentice entered the room. No ill words were spoken, or challenges made to their presence, but there were one or two dangerous-sounding growls, and if looks could kill then the two would have been ducking killing curses.

"Come on, then," Bill muttered, as he steered the younger wizard towards a dark wood bar that ran the length of one wall. The apprentice was quick to comply, and kept his eyes focused on a rough-hewn wood plank floor that was covered with empty peanut shells and blood-stained sawdust. They were greeted by a gruff-looking one-armed bartender who could have been mistaken for Mad Eye Moody's twin brother (in appearance, if not by attitude).

"Well, Bill-o…good to see you, son!" the bartender said.

"Good to see you too, Nick," the red-haired wizard replied. "Still serving lunch?"

"You bet…pull up a bar stool!"

"Thanks," said Bill, as he took a seat and patted the stool next to him. The apprentice curse breaker followed this nonverbal instruction, while the three wizards who had been sitting at the bar picked up their drinks and plates and moved towards a distant table.

"Don't mind them, lad…they're too long gone from their finishing school," the bartender quipped. He reached his one hand across the bar top and said, "My name's Nick…and you are?"

"This is Reggie Smith," Bill interjected. A sheepish grin grew on his face as he added, "Guess the same could be said about my manners…Nick is a wiz-bang summer apprentice."

"Well, welcome aboard, son," said Nick. "Which menu you be wanting?"

"We'll stick to human pub grub," Bill replied with a grin. He turned towards the young wizard and said, "Unless some of the goblin delicacies have caught your eye?"

The younger wizard looked at the slimy and (in some instances) still quivering contents on the other patron's plates and shook his head.

"Human food sounds brilliant," he stated.

"Washed down with a couple of ales?" Bill added.

"You got it, Bill-o," the bartender replied.

When Nick disappeared into the kitchen to place the food order, the young wizard risked another glance around the room. It resembled the inside of the Hogshead Tavern, done up with the detritus of tomb-raiding expeditions on all seven continents. There was a strong Egyptian-style theme to the décor, given Gringott's focus on plundering that part of the world. But you could also spot bits and pieces of Etruscan art, the odd Chinese terra cotta warrior, and Incan pottery. The only consistent theme to the decorating was a locker-room appreciation for the female form, in all of its naked (and often pornographic) glory.

"Not exactly Madam Puddifoot's, is it?" Bill joked.

"All the better," Reggie replied. He nodded towards the far wall and said, "Just glad to see that at least those blokes have their bits covered."

Bill looked over his shoulder and snorted.

The younger wizard had gestured towards a group of magical photographs, stacked three rows high across one wall. They were mostly head-shot portraits, with a few full-body images sprinkled in between. One had a smiling wizard sitting on a barstool, while another showed a curse breaker casually leaning against the side of a sarcophagus. The frames for these magical photographs were all decorated the same slightly odd way…with a carved pair of human arms that had upraised hands and elbows that were bent at right angles in the lower corners (forming a "U" shape on the picture frame's lower half).

"So who were they, then?" Reggie asked.

Bill chuckled.

"They're all members of the Curse Breaker's Hall of Fame."

"Really?" asked Reggie. "Well, then, I'm going to have my picture on that wall some day!"

Barking laughter turned the young wizard's attention away from the photographs.

Nick shook his head as he levitated plates and tankards down onto the bar and quipped, "So you think you have what it takes, son?"

"Well…something to aspire too, isn't it?" Reggie asked. "What do you have to do to get your picture up on that wall?"

The one-armed bartender smirked. "Not much, kid…you just have to be a dumb-arse."

"Not just any dumb-arse," Bill added with a smile. "You got to be a dumb-arse Gringotts curse-breaker who is dumb enough to be killed on a job."

"Oh."

"Still anxious to have your picture hanging, kid?" Nick asked with a smile.

The embarrassed curse breaker looked down at his plate of food and shook his head.

"Not really," he muttered with embarrassment.

Bill laughed as he slapped the younger wizard on the back. "You're not the first newbie to make that mistake, Reggie."

The apprentice curse breaker nodded, then looked back up towards the wall and squinted.

"What's with the arm frames, then?" he asked.

"That's the hieroglyph 'ka'," Bill replied. "Didn't you get a NEWT in Runes?"

The apprentice curse-breaker squinted at the nearest decorated frame.

"Ah, okay," he said. "Answer is yes, by the way…just never seen a three-dimensional version of that rune before." The young wizard took a sip of his drink and asked, "It means 'life-force,' right?"

Bill nodded.

"So they're part of a memorial, or something?"

"Exactly," Nick said approvingly. "They help frame up a permanent resting place for the spirits of those poor bastards."

The young wizard looked around the somewhat dodgy-looking canteen and asked, "So instead of passing on to the next world, the spirits of these dead curse breakers are stuck here…in this place?"

"Better here than in the different circles in Hell that most of these bastards were bound for!" Nick declared. He then leaned over the bar and asked, "So, Bill-o they've got you a new apprentice, then?"

Bill shook his head. "No, just taking out for lunch" he replied. "Reggie here is Johnson's apprentice."

"So where is he, then?"

"Still getting patched up, I imagine," replied the red-haired wizard. "They were out on a simple repo job this morning, and the idiot tripped over a flesh-melting ward."

"Is that so?"

Bill slapped the young wizard on the back and said, "Yup, you would have been hanging another picture frame on that wall if Reggie, here, hadn't been smart enough to levitate Johnson back out of harm's way and portkey his arse to the infirmary."

"Good on you, then, kid," Nick said, giving an approving nod.

The young wizard was modest enough to blush at the complement, which Nick took as a good sign. His opinion of the boy grew even more favorable when the apprentice asked Bill if it was safe for him to use the loo without an escort. The red-haired curse breaker nodded, and pointed the younger wizard in the right direction.

Once Reggie was out of earshot, the bartender leaned across the bar and quietly asked, "So how have you been, Bill?"

The red-haired wizard smiled.

"Doing okay," he said. "Thanks for asking…didn't know what kind of reception I'd get here."

Nick scoffed. "So is that why we haven't seen you around all Summer?"

"You know how it is," said Bill, nodding towards the other curse-breakers. "The way that the wiz-bang curse breakers get treated around here."

"Yeah, but you're not really one of them wiz-bangers, are you?" Nick asked.

A short breath caught in Bill throat, and he gave the bartender a wary glance.

"I am, at the moment, an employee of Gringott's Wizarding Bank."

Nick snorted. "Yeah, right. There's a few of us that know the real reason why your broom twigs have been clipped. No shame in minding one of the company's biggest accounts over his school holidays."

The red-haired wizard squinted, then gave a glance towards the canteen's other patrons.

"So does everyone know, then?" he asked.

"Why would you think that?"

"Cause nobody's made a run at me, telling me that I don't belong here?"

The bartender chuckled. "Ah, that…no, I suspect that's something different."

"What's that?"

"The rumor that a couple of goblin wiz-bangers got served up to the dragons over the weekend," said Nick.

Bill rolled his eyes.

"It was only one…and I had nothing to do with that decision!"

"Yeah, that just makes you all the more toxic," Nick said with a grin. "To have goblin managers offing their own just 'cause your girl was mistreated…only a fool would fail to take heed."

A booming voice called out from the entrance to the canteen.

"Aww, for Cris'sake, you leave country for a few weeks…hey, Nick when did you start serving fuckin' wiz-bangers?"

The one-armed bartender glanced towards the doorway and shook his head.

"Speaking of fools," he muttered.

Bill glanced over his shoulder and released an audible sigh as the other curse breaker walked up to the bar.

"You've got a lot of nerve showing your face around here, Weasley," barked the new arrival. "Why don't you go back to where you belong, and eat with the insurance salesmen?"

"Hello, Neumann…back from a job?" Bill asked.

"Just this morning," Neumann stated. "Going to really enjoy this payout."

"I'm happy for you."

"Rescue any kneazles from trees lately?"

"No, actually."

The sarcastic wizard broke off the taunts long enough down half of the pint glass that Nick had just set in front of him. When Reggie returned from the loo, Bill reluctantly introduced the apprentice to the arrogant curse breaker who had been in the same Gringott's hiring class. The younger wizard was quick to realize that there was some history between the two curse breakers, and that the new wizard was relishing the opportunity to get under Bill's skin.

"So, Weasley…just how bad did you fuck up your last _real_ job?" Neumann asked. "Must have been colossal for them to clip your twigs. Or did you lose your nerve and _ask_ to be transferred to the wiz-bangers?"

"Can't talk about it," Bill said.

"Oh, right…hiding behind terms of a contract," the other curse breaker said with snort. "At least you're not hiding behind your mummy's skirt."

One of the curse breakers who had been listening in on the conversation from a nearby table snorted, which led Neumann to add, "That's right…you're doing that now as well!"

"Give it a rest," Nick warned.

The curse breaker shook his head, turned towards Bill and asked, "So what's it like, moving back home with your mummy and daddy? Comforting? _Soothing_?"

"Back off, Neumann," Nick cautioned.

"Enjoying mummy's cooking, Weasley? Is she tucking you in at night, and reading you bedtime stories?"

Bill growled, "Sod off, Neumann."

The curse breaker sighed dramatically.

"Used to be fun, going head-to-head against you, Weasley…fighting for the best jobs. Now you're just…fucking pathetic."

Reggie Smith, feeling bad for being the reason why Bill was being taunted, pushed his plate away, thanked Bill for showing him the canteen, and quietly asked if it was time to return to work. The red-haired curse breaker shook his head, and whispered into the apprentice's ear.

"Not about to turn tail from this arsehole," he stated.

Neumann, sensing a potentially new avenue for abuse, implied that Bill was whispering "sweet nothings" into the young wizard's ear, and asked if his girlfriend had dumped him. This insult had Bill reaching for his wand, at the same time that one of the other curse breakers made his way up to the bar and whispered a warning into Neumann's ear about the risks of getting too aggressive in his taunts. The arrogant wizard was just cautious enough to back down a bit, and muttered a half-hearted apology.

Nick the bartender didn't think that half-hearted was good enough, so he pumped a fresh glass of ale, set it down on the bar next to the one that the curse breaker was nursing, then addressed the teen-aged apprentice.

"You might want to spend a few minutes getting to know Mr. Neumann here, kid," he stated. "Never know…you might just find yourself on his team some day."

"Boy, I'd love the chance to go on a real expedition!" Reggie declared.

Neumann smiled. "Not a bad plan, kid. Sooner you get yourself transferred out of that loser customer service department and get yourself in where the _real_ curse breakers work, the better."

Nick smiled. "Yes, there is something special about a curse breaker's first expedition." He turned towards Bill and asked, "Did you know that I was on the same team as Neumann the first time he went tomb raiding?"

The red-haired wizard shook his head as he brought his beer glass to his lips.

"No, I didn't," he replied, with a grin. "Don't imagine there's a story or two worth telling about that trip?"

"Oh, there may be…there maybe, indeed!"

Neumann frowned. "No need to bore the kid with tall tales," he muttered.

"Oh, I disagree, Mr. Neumann," Nick quipped. He raised his voice and loudly asked, "Anyone else want to hear how Andy, here, distinguished himself on his first trip to Egypt?"

"Hell, yes!" someone called back from a distant table. Within seconds nearly every canteen patron was gathered around the one-armed storyteller…and the one person who really didn't want to be there at that moment wasn't given a choice, thanks to a well-placed sticking charm that fixed Neumann's trousers to his bar stool. He could have whipped out his wand and cancelled the spell, of course, but then he would have had to push his way through the gathering, and lost even more face than he stood to lose if he just sat there and took it.

Or so he thought.

"It was an Egyptian black job," Nick began. "We was contracted by somebody who didn't exactly have all of the permits lined up with the locals. So we went in disguised as Muggle nomads…walked out as Muggle nomads…didn't use any magic above ground…"

"You actually walked into the desert?" asked Reggie.

"No, we rode camels into the site," Nick explained. "Once the job was done we had to walk home 'cause the camels were carrying the goods."

Bill nodded. "When it's a black job, you can't do magic above ground…can't portkey, or apparate…that would have lit up the local Ministry's sensors. He turned towards the one-armed wizard and asked, "Assume you were inside the Zone?"

"Aye, that we were."

Reggie asked, "So no brooms or carpets either?"

"Nope," Bill replied. "The Egyptian wizards really monitor the skies closely inside the area most likely to be…."

"Plundered?" the new curse-breaker asked.

"Erm…_visited_ is what we prefer to call it."

The others nodded in agreement.

The one-armed bartender said, "So we were camping out in Bedouin tents right on top of the site…and it was a bit more than fifteen miles to the nearest town. Neumann, here...he was getting rather frustrated by the fact that the team was one big fucking sausagefest, you know?

Reggie asked, "What's a sausage fest?"

"An all-male team," Bill explained.

"That's right," said Nick. "So one day…must have been two or three weeks into the job…our project manager Stonefire walks by our campfire and hears Neumann bitching about needing to get laid. So Stonefire walks up to Neumann and tells him that if he really needed to empty his balls that bad that he could use the camel that was tied out behind the mess tent."

Everyone who was listening in on story laughed. Except for Neumann, of course.

"Yeah, we all laughed at that too," Nick said with a grin. "But what do you know…later that night Neumann actually _did_ sneak behind the mess tent. It was just as Stonefire said…there was this female camel tied to a palm tree. So Neumann stands there, behind this female camel, and thinks for a minute. Decides that he isn't that desperate, and heads back to his tent for a wank."

The young wizard asked, "How did you know he did that?"

"Well…just guessing, I guess," Nick explained.

"Shut up and listen, kid," one of the other listeners barked.

Nick acknowledged these instructions with a respectful head nod towards the curse breaker who had issued them. He then continued on with his story.

"A week later, we're still up to our arses in deadfalls and other nasties, so no chance for a break. This time Neumann goes to the boss directly and complains. And again, Stonefire says that if Neumann needs to shag that badly that, well, there's still that camel out behind the mess tent."

"What he'd do?"

"Well, he looked Stonefire straight in the eye and asks how in the hell was he supposed to mount a beast like that? And Stonefire tells him that's what the ladder was for."

"Oh, shite, he didn't!" somebody chuckled.

"Well, not quite yet," Nick said with a leer. "Old Neumann, here…after hearing about this ladder he goes around back of the tent, and sure enough…there it is, lying on the ground a few feet away from the camel."

"So did he actually use the ladder?" Bill asked.

"Well, he thought about it, boyo…he definitely thought about it," said Nick. "Still, he decides that he's not that desperate."

"What happened, then?"

"One more week goes by. We'd been banging our heads against this tomb for a month straight, now, and Neumann not only got blue balls…he's got a blue willie, and a blue bum. Hell his knees were starting to look a little blue. He just couldn't take it anymore, so in the dead of night…after everyone else had turned in…he slipped around the back side of the tent, picked up that ladder and he leaned it up against the camel's arse. Then he climbed half-way up that ladder, so that his bits were lined up with the camel's bits. One hand lifts up the front of his robes, other hand lifts up the camel's tail, and then once he carefully balances himself he pokes his John Thomas in between the rungs and thrusts himself home."

"No! You gotta be pulling our leg, Nick!"

"I kid you not!" the retired curse-breaker claimed.

"How do you know it went down like that?"

"Okay, fine…we pieced that last string of events together afterwards."

"After when?"

"After the bloody camel woke up the whole bloody camp with her bloody hissing!"

The retired curse breaker waited for the roar of laughter to quiet down a bit before continuing on with his tale.

"So everybody piles out their sleeping bags and runs behind the mess tent to see just what in Merlin's name was going in. And there was Neumann, standing bare-arsed half-way up the ladder, pumping his hips back and forth, and banging that camel for all she was worth."

"What did you do then?"

"We laughed our arses off, of course," Nick replied. "Everyone but Stonefire, that is. Goblin didn't even have a smile on his face as he walked towards the camel, looked up towards Neumann. And then he asked…."

"What…c'mon Mate…what'd he ask?"

"He asked Neumann why he didn't just ride the camel into town to visit the Muggle whorehouse like the rest of us did!"

The story's punch line produced a boisterous roar of laughter that was sprinkled liberally with derisive taunts. Whoever had stuck Neumann's bum to his bar stool was kind enough to cancel the spell, which allowed the highly-embarrassed curse breaker to slip away before his cheeks could turn redder than they already were.

Bill leaned across the bar and thanked Nick as the noise volume dropped and the other curse-breakers returned to their tables. The one-armed bartender said that it was Neumann who should be thanking him…for delaying the idiot's own inductance into the Curse Breaker's Hall of Fame.

And Reggie Smith once again proved that he actually deserved to be a Gringotts employee by realizing the likely truth behind that statement.

**oo00OO00oo**

The Burrow provided a far more subdued lunchtime environment than the canteen, even after that morning's provocative question-and-answer sessions involving breast sizes and seat selections. The _Praetego_ spells that Fleur had cast on Hermione and Harry were still active, but unnecessary, once Ron emerged from the stairwell and sat down at the table. His arrival reminded the couple what he had been doing up in his bedroom, which forced them to consider what Fleur had likely done to distract Molly while they snogged and groped in the sitting room. The thought of the Weasley matriarch dashing off to her own bedroom to relieve some allure-induced stress more than just an erection-killer…Harry figured that just being able to keep his lunch down at the thought was an accomplishment.

An afternoon rain shower kept anyone from asking if a visit could be made to _Le Cote d'Weasley_. With the chicken coops now cleaned, Ginny was sent to her room as punishment for her saucy test question about Fleur's breasts. Molly paired Hermione with Ron for some stove-top brewing, and Molly strongly suggested that Fleur take a rest, since she was scheduled for second shift guard duty from four until midnight. Fleur politely suggested that she really didn't need an afternoon nap, and instead proposed that she repay the favor and spend the afternoon teaching Harry some useful French phrases.

Harry liked the idea of learning French, but Molly wouldn't allow it, noting that his ignorance of the language was supposed to be a critical requirement for his role as Fleur's English-language conversation partner. Instead, the Weasley Matriarch changed her mind and put Harry on potions duty alongside Hermione. She then instructed Ron to sit across from Fleur at the kitchen table, so that he could build up his tolerance to her presence to the point where _he _could serve as her conversation partner. Fleur had little interest in having Ron's help, but rather than outright refuse to comply with Molly's orders she went along with the scheme.

The red-haired teen didn't stand a chance.

The first time that Fleur released a burst of her male-focused allure, Ron's eyes immediately glazed over, and he bolted from the kitchen in search of a private place to rub. Molly chased after her son and dragged him by his ear back to the kitchen table. A sticking charm was then used to keep Ron's bum fixed to the bench.

The second time that Fleur casually released a burst of her male-focused allure, Ron wiggled and squirmed until he could no longer resist the temptation and reached down and grabbed himself through his robes. Molly chastised her son for his lack of willpower, and dragged his hands back into view. A sticking charm was then used to keep those hands fixed to the table top.

The third time that Fleur released a burst of her male-focused allure, Ron wiggled and squirmed and whined and wimpered. Molly chastised her son again, and used a silencing spell to keep Ron from using inappropriate words or making inappropriate noises.

The fourth and final time that Fleur released a burst of her male-focused allure, she didn't stop. Ron desperately tried to avoid an embarrassing release of his own. Hermione was unnerved by the surreal scene and lost her focus on her potions work. Harry was unnerved by the surreal way that Molly kept staring at his crotch (as she wondered why he wasn't being affected by Fleur the same way that her Ronnie was), and lost his focus on his potions work. The result was a sticky mess, as Ron and the stove-heated cauldron boiled over at roughly the same time.

Molly gave up on building her son's tolerance to Fleur's allure and sent the teen-aged wizard off to his room, leaving the other three to deal with the spoiled potion. Once this task was completed, Hermione, Fleur and Harry were allowed to return to the living room for another English language lesson.

With Molly still within ear shot, they had no chance to deconstruct the last few hours. So they decided to play it straight…at least at the beginning...

"Ready, then?" Hermione asked, as she took the same seat that she had used that morning.

"Absolutely," Harry replied brightly. He was sitting on one end of the living room couch, while Fleur sat on the other (with as much empty air between them as they could manage, given that Molly had already popped her head into the living room).

The part-Veela said, "Alors…"

"Fleur?"

"Oh, sorry, Hermione…Right, then."

"There you go...let's start with the 'h' sounds."

The French witch nodded, then turned towards Harry and asked, "Hello, Harry. How are you?"

The teen-aged wizard smiled, and replied, "I'm fine, Fleur...how are you?"

"I am very happy, Harry," she replied. "Was that Hedwig flying high in the air?"

"Erm…no, she's upstairs having a rest, I think."

"Oh, that ees…that _is_ nice to 'ear."

Hermione shook her head. "Fleur, it's…that _is_ nice to _hear_."

The French witch nodded. "It is nice to hear that Hedwig is having a rest in Harry's room."

"Great…keep going!" Hermione encouraged.

Fleur smiled. "Okay, 'Ermione…I think that Harry would also like to sleep in his room."

"It's Hermione."

"Oh, sorry…so, I should have said that I think that Hermione would also like to sleep in his room?"

The Muggleborn rolled her eyes.

"No, it's Hedwig that shares Harry's room. I have another roommate."

"Yes, it is Hermione that sleeps wiz me."

"No, I sleep _with_ you, Fleur."

"Really?" Harry whispered. "In _her_ bed, or yours?"

"Will you stop it?" Hermione asked. "We're trying to have a serious lesson here."

"Sorry…go on, then."

"Zanks…I mean, Thanks, Harry."

"You're welcome."

"So, Harry…did you hear the howls in Hermione's room last night?"

"Erm, no…I didn't….were you _helping her_, Fleur?"

"Nobody was helping or howling, Harry," Hermione muttered.

"Oh, right…Fleur is just making up these sentences using words that start with the letter _h_."

The French witch nodded. "Exactly…I want to keep Hermione happy, Harry."

"I like keeping Hermione happy as well," Harry said with a rakish grin.

"That's great, Fleur!" her tutor praised. "You just correctly pronounced another string of three consecutive "h" words! How about another one?"

Fleur rested her chin in her hand and thought for a moment.

"Ah...I have one. Harry, can I help Hermione holster your wand?"

Her conversation partner laughed. "Good one, Fleur."

Fleur looked at him, a bit impatiently.

"Something wrong?" Harry asked.

"This ees a practice conversation," she replied. "I was waiting for the answer to my question."

Harry stifled a snort of amusement, then asked, "Sorry Fleur…shall we try it again?"

The part-Veela nodded. "Harry, can I help Hermione holster your wand?"

"Might better ask her," Harry quipped.

"Of course," Fleur replied. She turned towards her tutor and asked, "Hermione, can I help you the next time that you holster Harry's wand?"

The Muggleborn sighed. "What makes you think that I have already done that?"

Fleur shrugged. "Eef zee shoe feets…"

"_If_ the shoe fits?" Harry asked.

"That is a good place to use that phrase, no?"

"Erm, yes…I guess it is," Hermione blustered.

Fleur smiled, and asked, "So, Hermione…does Harry's shoe fit? Or do you need to use a horn shoe?"

The Muggleborn blushed. "It's called a shoe horn in English."

"Thank you for correcting me."

"That's what I'm here for."

Fleur waited patiently.

"What?" Hermione asked.

"I am now making conversation with you, Hermione," Fleur explained.

"So…oh," said Hermione. "Right….I don't know if Harry would need a shoe horn."

"You will know soon, though?"

Hermione sighed. She then tried to turn the tables by asking, "Do Bill's shoes fit, Fleur?"

The French witch giggled. Lowering her voice, she replied, "We are not _zat_ kinky, Hermione."

Harry snorted. "You mean that you two are not _that_ kinky."

Fleur giggled. "So has my Bill been telling you stories, zen?"

"It's _then_, Fleur," Hermione whined. "Maybe we should move on to the 'th' sound."

"Certainly," the French witch replied. She quickly turned towards The-Boy-Who-Lived and asked, "Harry, did you know that Hermione's thinks that your thicket should be thinner?"

He laughed out loud.

"So?"

"Ah, right…erm, no, Fleur. I didn't know that she thinks that I should thin out my thicket."

"Do you know how to thin your thicket?"

"Erm…maybe," he replied. "Can't say _that_ I've ever _thought_ to do _that_ sort of _thing_."

"Really?"

"Sorry, it's…let's just say that you don't see that kind of horticulture in the dormitory...or at least not in the boys's dormitory."

"Harry, that does not matter."

"It doesn't?"

"It does not matter if the other boys do not care if they tickle their girlfriend's noses."

"Fleur!" Hermione hissed, throwing a pointed glance towards the kitchen door. "Remember the hovercraft!"

The French witch smiled and nodded. "Yes, I must remember to pronounce that word correctly. Hovercraft."

"Very good," Harry offered.

"So, how else can I explain?" asked Fleur. "Ah! I know!" she declared.

"What?"

The part-Veela reached out and touched the wizard's knee.

"So let us eemagine…"

"It's imagine."

"Imagine that there is a very large snake zat lives een zee thicket?"

"Fleur?" asked a wary Hermione.

"Oh, sorry. I meant to say that there is a very large snake living in the thicket."

"Really?"

"Yes, perhaps it is even dragon-sized?"

"Fleur!" Hermione whispered.

Her roommate paid no mind.

"Do you understand, Harry?" she asked.

"Absolutely," he replied, enjoying the blush of embarrassment growing on Hermione's face. "I've got a dragon-sized snake living in my thicket."

"And so, there is someone who is very hungry. She wishes to eat the snake…to swallow it up."

"Really? That's very interesting," Harry quipped.

"It is," Fleur agreed. "But this person has…she has never swallowed a snake before."

Hermione dropped her face into her hands and shook her head in embarrassment.

Her roommate ignored this response and pushed forward.

"And I think that it will be easier for her to swallow the snake if the thicket is thinner."

"Oh, shoot me now and get it over with, Fleur!" Hermione whispered.

"Is something wrong, ma cherie?" the French witch asked. "Did I make a mispronouncement?"

The Muggleborn witch shook her head even as her face was still buried in her hands.

"I don't think that 'mispronouncement' is a word…at least not in English," she said through her fingers.

Harry laughed.

"I don't suppose either of you could offer some advice on thinning your thicket?"

Fleur chuckled loudly. "Oh, Harry…you make me laugh so hard! Don't you already know?"

"Obviously not."

"So is this a horticulture lesson, then?" asked a playful voice from the kitchen entrance.

"Bill!" shouted Fleur. She jumped off the couch and dashed across the room to give her intended a hug.

"Hey, there," he replied with a smile.

Fleur pulled back from her hug so that she could look into his eyes.

"You are home early, no?"

The curse breaker nodded at the same time that he yawned.

"Time off to recover from a bit of portkey lag, and I wanted the chance to say hello before you did second shift guard duty."

"You are tired from making portkey trips?" asked Fleur.

"Just a bit," he replied. Bill glanced over his shoulder towards the kitchen, then turned back to Fleur and whispered, _"Plus tard, ma cherie."_

Hermione cleared her throat.

"Fleur was in the middle of an _English_ language conversation," she stated.

"So I _heard_," Bill chuckled.

"Busy day, then?" asked Harry.

Bill glanced over his shoulder towards the kitchen before he replied with a furtive head shake.

"Later," he mouthed.

When Harry nodded, Bill vocalized, "It certainly was an interesting day."

"Really?" asked Hermione.

"Yeah, I visited Fred and George's on the way back," said Bill, as he slipped a rucksack off of his shoulder. "They had a few things that they wanted us to test…"

"Oh, and what would that be?" asked Molly, as she entered the room.

Her son smiled as he opened the rucksack's flap and pulled out a Quaffle-sized ball.

"Just some alternative ammunition for the gnome launcher," he quipped.

Molly scowled.

"If you think that I am going to allow any of you to waste your time on such frivolities…"

"Yes, Mum," Bill muttered, as he handed the rucksack over.

Fleur, Harry and Hermione wouldn't have said anything about Bill's quick capitulation so long as Molly was in the room. Their unspoken thoughts were quelled, however, by the wink that Bill gave them while his mother was rummaging through the rucksack.

"Your father and I are going to talk about this when he comes home…now, go wash up, Bill. And Fleur…your shift starts in ten minutes. I hope for our sakes that you're as well-rested as you claim."

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley," Fleur said, with a sing-songy tone of voice that was dripping with passive aggressiveness.

**oo00OO00oo**

The animated after-dinner conversation between Molly and Arthur regarding the potential value of the gnome launcher within an integrated home security system lasted long enough for Bill slip outside with Harry and Hermione without anyone else noticing. The three walked briskly towards the orchard, stopping once they were just out of sight of the Burrow's back door.

"First things first," said Bill, as he cast a quick security ward, then reached into a pocket and retrieved four buttons.

"Damn, can't tell which is which, now," he muttered.

"Our own storage buttons?" Hermione whispered with excitement.

"Yeah," said Bill, as he conjured a small table and dropped the buttons onto the surface.

He tapped one of the buttons with the tip of his wand and said, "Password."

"Not a very secure password, is it?" Hermione asked.

"Just temporary," Bill replied, as the button expanded in size. "You can change it later."

As the curse breaker lifted off the button top, he caught Harry and Hermione both leaning forward to get a glimpse of the button's contents once.

"Ah, ah, ah…no peeking," he joked, as he lifted the secret storage device off the table and turned away from the young couple.

"Oh, Bill…"

"It's better this way," he explained, as he took a quick peek inside. Bill then re-secured the button top and turned back towards Harry and Hermione.

"How so?" she asked.

"Your mail-order packages arrived," said Bill with a wide grin. He held out the enlarged button and asked, "Would you rather Harry see your new unmentionables now, or later, when you two have a little more privacy?"

"Oh…!" Hermione said with exasperation, as she grabbed the button out of Bill's hand. "It's not like either of you haven't seen a pair of knickers before!"

"It's not knickers that I saw at the top of the shipping list," Bill quipped.

Harry chuckled. "So what was on top, then?"

Hermione's cheeks began to flush as she considered the possibilities.

"Never you mind," she stated, as she pulled out her own wand. "Switching passwords should be a low-enough powered spell for me to use safely, right?"

"If you're just changing the password, then sure," Bill replied. "Better let me do the switching spell for the buttons, though…just to be safe."

Once the secret storage button was safely swapped out and secured to the outside of Hermione's robe, Bill took a look inside the second button.

"Okay, this one is Hermione's as well," he stated.

"More unmentionables?" asked Harry.

Bill smiled and shook his head.

"You'll want to keep track of which button is which," he stated, as he switched it for a different button on Hermione's robes. "This one is a charmed miniature washing machine…wouldn't do to send a book through a spin cycle, would it?"

"The button does laundry?" asked Harry.

"Yeah, it's dead useful when you're out in the desert on a job," Bill quipped. "Also comes in handy when you don't want your mum checking out your drawers."

"Ah…that will be useful," said Hermione. "How does it work?"

"Fleur can show you later," said Bill, as he took the remaining two buttons and used a switching spell that fixed them to Harry's robes. "I'll swing by your room tonight and do the same, Milord."

"Oh, lay off on the milord, will you?" Harry asked.

Bill shrugged. "Seems all the more appropriate after I visited some of your estates today."

"The portkey travel you were talking about earlier?" Hermione asked.

"That's right," the curse breaker said. "You'll lord over a dozen different properties, Harry...at least once you take on the titles."

"A dozen?" Harry asked skeptically.

"You travelled a dozen different places by portkey this afternoon?" Hermione asked skeptically.

"Yes, on the dozen, and no on all the visiting…only toured the three safest and most secure properties," Bill replied.

"A dozen different properties?" asked Harry.

"Where did you go?" asked Hermione.

Bill glanced back over his shoulder towards the Burrow. Once he visually confirmed that they still had some privacy, he turned back towards the other two.

"First stop was the Inner Hebrides," he stated. "A lovely thatched-roof four-bedroom cottage and acreage on the Isle of Skye, up in the Cuillin Hills…unplottable location with heavy-duty wards. Lots of privacy, some great hiking trails…"

"But it's still in Scotland, and well-within Dumbledore's reach if he really put his mind to it," Hermione declared.

Bill nodded. "Ideal choice if you couldn't or didn't want to cross international borders…and it's the only one of the three you could apparate to, once you got your licenses."

"Could Gringotts help us cross international borders, if we wanted to?" Hermione asked.

"Absolutely," said Bill. "Only took a couple of hours to secure international portkeys. You'd be able to do the same, and besides…you both want the chance to show off your new swim costumes, right?"

Harry chuckled. "So, where else, then?"

"You own a 640-acre coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica," Bill replied. "There's just a small river on the property, but I could also see the sea shore from the veranda of the manor house. Nice beaches, I hear."

"I've heard that as well," Hermione replied, as her eyes lit up at the thought of the possibilities.

"I took some pictures at each of the locations…put them in the same button as Harry's new banana hammocks," Bill quipped. "By the way, you'd fit right in wearing one of those down there…or so I hear."

"So what's the downside?" Harry asked, trying not to blush in response to the teasing.

"Besides the bloody heat and the bloody humidity that had me sweating like a pig within a minute of my arrival?"

"Yeah, besides all that."

"August is the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season."

"What's a hurricane?" Harry asked.

Bill and Hermione's both snapped their heads towards Harry's, before they remembered his limited ranges of education and experience.

"Massive tropical storm with torrential rains and hundred-mile an hour winds," Bill finally replied.

"Right, doesn't sound like much of a holiday," said Harry.

"Perfect place for Christmas hols, though," Hermione noted with a smile.

"It's a date, then," her boyfriend replied. This earned him a well-deserved kiss, and a whispered description of the special swim costume that she would save for the occasion.

Bill gave the young couple a moment, before he cleared his throat and stated, "Which brings us to the place that I'd recommend you consider, milord…fancy a trip to North America?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Care to be a little more specific?"

"It's a hidden island within a river that divides part of the Muggle United States from Muggle Canada," said Bill.

"What's it called?" asked Harry.

"Erm...Hidden Island?" said Bill.

"Nice and simple,at least."

"St. Lawerence River,then?" Hermione asked.

"That's right."

"Which side?" Hermione asked.

"Canadian side," the curse breaker replied. "Not that it matters if you're a witch or wizard…it's all the same North American Confederation of Magical States."

Harry was tempted to ask for a primer on wizard world geography, but knew that they were talking on borrowed time. So instead, he asked, "How big is this island, then?"

Bill searched for that answer on a slip of parchment that he pulled out of his robe pocket. "Not that large…only three hundred and fifty-three acres."

"Not that large?" Hermione said with an eye roll. "That's what…150 hectares?"

"More or less."

"How about how big it is in units of measurement that I understand?" Harry asked.

"We've got close to forty acres of land within the Burrow's wards," Bill replied.

"Okay, so it's almost ten times bigger than big enough," Harry observed. "And the wards are good there?"

"Yeah, the entire island is unplottable and hidden from Muggles and Magicals alike," Bill replied. "As far as everyone else knows, there's only 999 islands there."

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"The entire area is called 'The Thousand Islands'," Bill explained. "It's got a really nice private beach, and a small castle that the Potter family has apparently used as a vacation home for more than six hundred years."

"_More _than six-hundred years?" Hermione asked skeptically.

"Wizards did their exploring and discovering before the Muggles did," Bill replied.

"Oh."

"Great location, actually," the curse breaker noted. "Within apparition distance of Montreal, Salem and New York City."

"Useful next year, then," said Harry.

Bill shook his head. "They allow fourteen-year olds to learn over there. You both could get licenses, if you wanted."

"Even with my injury?" asked Hermione.

"Okay, so maybe towards the end of the holiday," Bill admitted.

"Thought it was too dangerous for kids younger than seventeen to learn how to apparate?" said Harry.

"That might have been the case two-hundred years ago," said Bill. "Magical maturity is tied closely to physical maturity, and average age of puberty is what…twelve, thirteen these days?"

"Something like that," said Hermione. "So if it's safer for today's teen-agers to learn at a younger age, why do they make us wait?"

Harry snorted. "That's easy…because most lawmakers are also parents."

Bill agreed wholeheartedly. "Can you imagine kids having the ability to pop off someplace all on their own, without needing their parent's help or approval?"

Harry chuckled. "Yes, well…that is sort of what we're talking about now, isn't it?"

"Not an issue for the emancipated head of two major houses," Bill noted. "And if Hermione's parents are worried…well, Fleur and I could be there acting as chaperones, right?"

"Not acting too hard, I hope," Harry quipped.

"Hush, now!" Hermione hissed.

"Relax, Sweetheart," said Harry, as he reached for his girlfriend's hand. "Your parents have passports, don't they? If we did this…might be nice if they went along, and you finally got the chance to show off what you've learned in school."

"You actually want to spend time on a small island with your girlfriend's father?" Bill teased.

"Oh, I don't know…how many bedrooms in that castle."

"Erm…twelve, I think."

"Excellent…then it's big enough to invite Fleur's family as well."

"Hey, now, let's not get too ambitious…"

Hermione snorted. "Oh, it's a wonderful idea…little Gabrielle trying to bait Harry's hook…"

"Erm…good point. Don't want to get too ambitious," said Harry. "And we still haven't decided whether this is a good idea, or fleshed out the potential counter-actions."

"Fair enough," Hermione admitted. She turned towards Bill and asked, "And you're certain we only need to decide a day or two in advance?"

"That's what Chokebar has said...could be ready to go the moment Harry becomes Lord Potter-Black."

"What about Harry's passport, then?" the Muggleborn witch asked.

"Ah…thanks, Hermione, I knew I was forgetting something," said Bill. "Harry, I'm supposed to ask how many you want."

"How many what?"

"Muggle passports."

"He has a choice?" Hermione asked.

"Erm, yes, actually," Bill admitted. "Turns out that Harry's father was born there."

"In North America?" asked Harry.

The curse breaker nodded his head. "From what I was told, Harry's grandparents were on holiday when a nasty strain of Dragon Pox broke out in Britain. His grandmum was seven months pregnant at the time, and they didn't want to risk her catching the Pox after all of the years that they'd spent trying to produce an heir."

"So she stayed in Canada until James was born?"

"That's right."

"So Dad was born in North America," said Harry. "I was still born here in Britain, right?"

"Yes," said Bill. "But because your father was born in Canada, you can hold dual citizenship…or quadruple, if you count the magical sides as well."

Harry shook his head and sighed. "Is this something else that needs to be added to the long list of _'Shite my headmaster should have told me'_?"

"Dunno," said Bill. "Chokebar didn't even know all of this until I told him this afternoon."

"How'd you learn it, then?"

"Erm…well, each of the properties has a caretaker," said Bill. "The one in Canada was a talkative little fellow who has served in that position for seventy some-odd years."

"Served House Potter for all that time?" Hermione asked.

"Yes."

Harry muttered an expletive under his breath.

Hermione would have called him on his language, had the same thing not been resting on the tip of her tongue.

"How many?" Harry asked.

"How many years has the caretaker served there?" Bill asked.

"No…how many house elves will I own once I become Lord Potter-Black?"

Bill let out a deep sigh as he began to add up the numbers in his head.

"Depends," he finally replied. "House elves aren't treated as slaves in most places around the world…more like indentured servants."

"How many would answer the call if I summoned them all at once?" asked Harry.

"Well…House Potter has twenty-four that have been loaned out on long-term contracts, but they'd still respond if it was an emergency, so…"

"Just give me a number, Bill."

"Thirty-seven."

"Bloody Hell!" Harry hissed.

"Bloody Hell is right, someone's coming," Hermione whispered, after catching some movement with the corner of her eye.

Bill quickly cancelled the security charm.

"What are you three doing out here?" Molly asked, as she strode towards them with her clock under one arm and a wrapped package under the other.

Her son turned back towards his mum and said, "Teaching these two a tripwire detection charm."

"You know that they are not allowed to do under-aged magic."

"No law against them watching as I do the charm, is there?" Bill asked.

"They will do well enough to worry about the spells on the official Hogwarts spell list," Molly declared. She turned towards Harry and asked, "Would you mind if Hedwig made a quick trip to Romania, Dear?"

The-Boy-Who-Lived looked at the large package under her arm and cautiously replied. "Not at all, Mrs. Weasley…although it isn't going to be very quick if that's what you want to send."

Molly looked down at the package under her arm and shook her head. "Oh, no…this just arrived here for us," she explained. "It's just a small letter that I need to send to Charlie."

Hedwig startled Molly when she chose that moment to silently swoop out of nowhere and landed on Harry's shoulder. He couldn't help his lips curling up into a small grin as his familiar balanced her weight on one foot as she held the other out towards Bill's mum.

"Aaah…I left the letter back inside the kitchen," said Molly. "And as long as we're there…Ginny needs your help in the kitchen, Harry. If you work together there's still enough time to start on a new batch of pain relief potions before bedtime."

Harry's eyes darted towards Hermione's and they shared a brief, wordless conversation. Then he looked back towards Molly and nodded.

"See you two back inside?" he asked Hermione and Bill.

Molly frowned. "Oh, yes, that's right…I've…I mean, Bill's father and I…have decided to allow some of your free time to be spent on that contraption," she stated. "Arthur is already doing his tinkering on the other side of the house now.

Hermione and Bill recognized this statement as both an order and an opportunity.

"We'll head that way then, Mrs. Weasley," the Muggleborn witch replied.

While Harry followed Molly back inside the house with Hedwig still perched on his shoulder, his future liegeman and current girlfriend took the long route around the house towards the gnome launcher. Bill used that time to tell Hermione that he'd anticipated her concerns about House Potter's house elves, and placed a rare, out-of-print book inside of her storage button. It was written in the Nineteenth-Century by a jaded Muggleborn wizard who left the wizarding world after spending forty years at a dead-end job working for the "Beasts and Beings" section of the Ministry of Magic. The Ministry of Magic and Gringotts had worked together to buy up all of the first printing and prevent any subsequent editions of this expose from being made. Both institutions were highly motivated to keep certain truths about non-human sentients from escaping into the general magical populace…the Ministry was afraid that this knowledge would make them look bad, while the goblins were afraid that this knowledge would make them look too good (as there were profits to be made out of ignorance).

Bill highly recommended that Hermione read the chapter on house elves that night when she was alone in bed. She promised to do so, and they then spent the next ninety minutes happily experimenting with the magical artillery shells that Arthur had liberated from his wife's impoundment.

Fleur still had two hours of guard duty to complete by the time that Hermione dressed for bed. Intent on keeping her promise to Bill, she sorted through her lingerie-filled storage button and selected a silk nightgown that was designed more for her comfort than for her boyfriend's enjoyment. As she settled into bed and opened the book to right chapter, she was overwhelmed by the feelings of sexual arousal that Harry suddenly began to broadcast through her familiar. Hermione was confused…with Hedwig making a mail run Harry couldn't be getting any indication of her own emotional state, and she didn't think Harry was narcissistic enough to get off on modeling his own mail-order unmentionables.

But then a more likely interpretation came to mind…her boyfriend wasn't aroused by knowing what she was presently wearing or feeling…he was getting off just by imagining what she might be wearing or might be doing at that moment.

Hermione liked this interpretation very much. So much so that she closed the book, turned down the covers and slipped out of bed (not that she would have been able to focus on the text if she hadn't). The Muggleborn expanded her storage button, shucked off the relatively modest slip, and pulled out the raciest costume that her boyfriend had selected from the mail-order catalog. She then jumped back onto her bed, closed the curtains, and pretended that Harry was sitting on the foot of the bed. She then proceeded to give the foot of the bed the kind of show that she imagined that Harry might be imagining…acting if she was earning the arousal that he was presently broadcasting in her direction.

She knew that he couldn't know what she was doing right then, but figured that it would be just as much fun to watch his face the next day when she told him what she was wearing…and what she was doing while she was wearing it.

**oo00OO00oo**

A/N: A personal note…one of the weird yet memorable milestones that I reached as I journeyed out of adolescence was the first time that my father told a dirty joke in my presence. I was around twelve at the time…he didn't tell that joke to me; rather, he shared it with his buddy as the three of us walked through a corn field during a pheasant hunt. Might seem really odd, but this obvious lack of discretion made me feel rather adult...like he was accepting me as one of his male buddies, instead of one of his tweener sons. It was a cool moment for a 12-year old boy…even if the joke wasn't all that funny.

The bartender's story about the Egyptian camel is a direct adaptation of that dirty joke. I don't think that I have made the punchline any funnier, but…well, when your dad is facing the need for open heart surgery you tend to reminiscence and get all sentimental. Apologies for the indulgence.


	8. Chapter 8: To the Barricades!

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: **Reposted twelve-hours after the original notice went out...looks like new stories and updates are finally emerging from pocket space. I love ffn!

Thanks to everyone from the Seel'vor group that read and edited a draft version of this update. It's shorter than previous chapters, but it's fairly well-contained, and you'd rather see "what happens next" now rather than wait a few more weeks, right? More at the end.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 8: To the Barricades!**

Fleur realized that she had forgotten to reapply the silencing charms when the reason for applying those charms woke her at an ungodly hour.

"What…really? Again?" Hermione moaned.

The French witch had the same thought in mind.

Fleur groped for her wand and quietly cast a _Tempus _charm. It was 3:30 in the morning.

"It's way too early, Harry…go back to sleep…"

Fleur's consciousness sharpened as her eyebrows jumped up towards her hairline. She turned onto her side, and peeked through the narrow gap in her bed curtains.

"No really, Sweetheart, give it a rest…give me a rest!"

The part-Veela stifled the giggle that was threatening to escape her lips. How in Merlin's name had they gotten around Molly's gender line?

"Please, Harry…Please? Oh, you are such a randy lad, aren't you…Oh, bugger it…I give up!"

Bill's fiancee licked her lips as she heard the ruffle of thrown-back blankets coming from behind her roommate's closed bed curtains.

"Okay, Fly Boy, plunge down into your slave girl's tight approach…"

Fleur's eyes flashed in surprise…had the young couple gone further than she'd thought?

"That feels so good, Luv! The way that you're targeting my…..that you're….yes-s-s-s-s-s-s-s! Yes! Yes! **Yes!**..."

A hastily cast silencing spell kept Fleur from hearing the exciting climax to the early-morning audio performance. She could only hope that she'd been quick enough to keep that performance from waking up the rest of the house.

The part-Veela pulled off her own blankets, swung her legs around, and slipped out of bed. She quickly crossed the room and placed her ear against the bedroom door. There was nothing to hear coming from the other side. Fleur stepped back, whispered a series of quick detection spells, then let out a deep breath…while she might have forgotten to reapply the silencing charms to Hermione's bed curtains after returning from her late-night guard duty, she hadn't been too tired (or too foolish) to forget applying the privacy charms to the bedroom door, walls, floor, or ceiling.

Fleur glanced back towards Hermione's bed and considered her options. There were so many ways to have fun with the situation…but should she surprise the young lovers before, or after the apex of their latest coupling? Perhaps that high point already been reached behind the spell-silenced curtains?

The part-Veela sniffed the pheromone-enriched air, searching for an answer. There was a heavy, musky, whiff of Hermione…something that nicely complemented her own musky scent of excitement. But there was no male in the mix…nothing like the sharp scent of Harry's pre-release that she'd caught the day before, as Hermione ground against her boyfriend's excitement.

The French witch smiled, then shook her head. All was not what it seemed…it was only what she smelled.

Fleur tip-toed back into her own bed and slipped under the covers. There would be time to tease in the morning.

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione winced and turned away from the unwelcomed invasion of light.

"Ten more minutes, Mum?"

The woman who had thrown open the Muggleborn's bedcurtains giggled.

"Zere ees no time, ma Chérie."

Hermione groaned.

"Mind the zees and Chéries, Luv."

Fleur giggled some more as she plopped down onto the side of the bed and slapped her roommate's blanket-covered thigh.

"Mais, eet ees too hard to focus when zee air ees so heavy wiz your sex, ma petite loutre!" she teased. The French witch nodded towards the book that lay unopened next to the pillow and asked, "It must have been a very sexy roman, no?"

Hermione turned her head towards the book with the chapter on house elves and groaned.

"It's not a romance novel," she stated.

"Eef you say so. Come, eet ees time for la magie médecine…unless your fingers are too tired from all zee rubbing to hold your wand?"

"Very funny," Hermione whined as she pulled the pillow from underneath her head and swung it towards her roommate. Fleur ducked.

"It is good that you still have some energy after all the wet dreaming and the little deaths," Fleur teased.

"What make you think that I was asleep long enough to hit REM stage?" Hermione muttered. "Crookshanks is going to have to find someplace else to sleep at night."

"Ah, so you are complaining about the broadcasts? Of you feeling what your lover felt as you felt yourself?"

"Four bloody times last night!" Hermione hissed. "And it was how _he _felt that was forcing me to feel myself, not the other way around."

"It is a complaint?" Fleur asked. "Would you like me to ask Harry to reduce the number of times that he masturbates each day?"

"Don't you dare!" Hermione hissed, as she swung her pillow again.

Fleur ducked underneath the flight path, then playfully reached down and tweaked one of the nipples that had exposed by the shifting blankets.

"What eez zis? Do you need to put on clothes just so you can take zem off during zee practice?"

Hermione huffed as she brushed off Fleur's fingers and slipped off the opposite side of the bed. The full frontal flash of flesh generated an "Ooh, la, la!" before the Muggleborn could slip on her bathrobe.

"As if you sleep wearing anything more than a smile," Hermione pouted, as she walked towards the door, wand in hand. "I'll be back in a minute," she added, before casting an unlocking charm, and slipping out into the hall.

As Fleur sat on her roommate's bed, waiting for to return from the loo, she spotted something metallic out of the corner of her eye. She looked down, and gasped when she spotted a single golden link of chain peeking out from underneath the bedcovers. The gasp turned into a giggle of delight when she reached down and began to pull more and more links into view. When she discovered a silk-lined metal collar at the end of this chain, Fleur hissed, "Oh, ma sexy, kinky loutre!"

The bedroom door opened, then closed very quickly behind a very embarrassed witch.

"Put that away before someone else sees it!" Hermione hissed.

Fleur smiled as she started to swing the collar and chain in a circle. "You know, I must have a serious discussion wiz you about zis!"

Hermione reached out and grabbed the collar.

"Oh, please, Fleur."

"I am serious, 'ermione…eet ees dangerous to add a bondage toy such as zis to your sex life wizout someone being there for your safety!"

Hermione's jaw dropped in disbelief. "It's not a sex toy…it's part of a costume!"

"C'est vraiment?" asked Fleur. "You are making ze tricks and treets een July?"

"No, I was trying on one of the mail-order costumes that Harry picked out for me," Hermione whined, as she pulled her duvet off of her bed and revealed what the other items that she had hidden down underneath the covers. "See? Slave-girl Leia costume, complete with metal bra and bottoms."

"Ah, La Guerre des Étoiles!" Fleur squealed. "You must show me!"

"No, I must put this away and get to my spell work," Hermione countered. "You do have to work at the bank today, right?"

"Yes, yes…but you must first tell me…why do you hide eet zere?"

"Well, I certainly wasn't going to wear that outfit while I slept," said Hermione.

"But you are usually so tidy, no?"

"Yes, well…I would have hidden them in the buttons that Bill gave me, but…I couldn't really store the costume in with the clean clothes, and I frankly didn't know if the costume was button washable."

"Button washa…Ah! I understand!" said Fleur. "But if you were just trying it on for size, why would you need for it to be cleaned?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"So I was wearing it while Harry was broadcasting last night…okay?"

Fleur giggled.

"The button is safe for drying the knickers that you get wet, ma petite loutre."

"Ha, ha…very funny."

"Oui…ha, ha, ha, ha…I practice the 'h' sound, no?"

"No," said Hermione. "You tell me if I can safely clean this outfit in the button washer."

"It is safe."

"Thank you," Hermione said, as she gathered all of the pieces of the costume and set them next to her robes.

"We will start with the paintball game, then?" Fleur asked.

Hermione worried her lower lip with her teeth as she dumped the pieces of her slave-Leia outfit into the enlarged button washer.

"It's the twenty-third, isn't it?" she asked. "I can start using second-year spells."

"Alors, what fun can we now have?"

Hermione closed and shrunk down the charmed button, then walked over to her desk.

"Most of this is from the Standard Book of Spells," she muttered, running a finger down a hand written list. "I can make invisible ink become visible, and do the feather-light and hair-thickening charms…"

"Oh, that is a good one…instead of changing the color of our little cats, we can make their fur grow thicker!"

"And you're calling _me_ a kinky little otter?" Hermione asked with disbelief. "So how do you propose we sex up the _Expelliarmus_ spell?"

"Eet is easy…you lose your wand, you lose an item of clothing! Although…it ees no longer as much fun now that you not embarrassed to be in your own skin…"

"Should I be apologetic?" Hermione asked, as she untied her robe and let it fall off her shoulders. Now naked, she touched her wand tip to her other charmed button and enlarged it.

"We should have enough time for a three-item game, don't you think?" she asked. "Let's see…looks like the reverse-cowgirl costume will work."

Fleur snorted when her roommate pulled a wide-brimmed felt cowboy hat out of her charmed storage button and set on her head.

"Perhaps that outfit is better saved for when you can make the bareback ride with your boyfriend, no?" she asked.

"Oh, please," Hermione sighed, slipping her feet into a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots. She then pulled out a large red bandana, stretched it out against her chest, then frowned.

"This was supposed to be adjustable," the Muggleborn muttered, as she checked the sales tag that was attached to one end.

"I think I know how that works, ma Chérie," Fleur offered. "It ees charmed to follow your intent."

"How?" Hermione asked, offering the cotton square to her roommate.

Fleur took hold of opposite corners of the bandana, and let the other ends drop to form a triangle. She then pressed the bandana against Hermione's belly, and wrapped her hands around the Muggleborn's waist. The third corner of the bandana draped just low enough to cover Hermione's fanny.

"Press your wand against the fabric, and imagine as if it was a pair of knickers," Fleur instructed.

When Hermione followed these orders, the two corners of the bandana that Fleur was holding stretched out to meet each other over the small of her back and formed a knot. The other corners stretched downwards, dove in between Hermione's legs and snaked their way up between her cheeks. They twisted along the way, forming a thin strand that wrapped around the newly-created waistline to form a snug thong.

The fit was tight enough to cause Hermione to squirm, and bounce from one foot to the other. She reached down and pulled the fabric away from her fanny before it could form a camel toe.

"Okay, so…is that the only option?"

Fleur shook her head and said the incantation that unknotted the fabric and returned the bandana to its original shape. She grabbed the cloth away from Hermione's hips, then folded it over a few times to form a three-inch wide strip of fabric.

The French witch pressed the thin strip of fabric across Hermione's chest and said, "Imagine a top." When the Muggleborn witch did as asked, the two ends of the folded bandana stretched behind her back and formed a knot.

Hermione looked down at the ersatz tube top and frowned…the strip of fabric was covering her breasts well enough for her to be able to wear it out in public (at least in the Muggle world).

Shaking her head in disappointment, Hermione twisted the bandana around so that she could easily reach and untie the knot.

"It's not going to choke me if all I want is a neck kerchief, is it?" she asked.

"Not unless you wish it to do so," Fleur smirked.

Hermione said, "Good," then loosely tied the triangular-shaped red-checked bandana around her neck (leaving her bits and everything else between hat and boots exposed).

"There's my three pieces," the bushy-haired witch told her roommate. She placed her hands on her hips and asked, "So are you going to gawk or get dressed?"

"I 'ave created une petite monster," Fleur muttered in wonder, as she walked over to her chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of knickers and a chemise to wear under her night robe.

She would have upped the "petite" adjective a few notches in size if she had recognized the classic Tom Jones song that Hermione had begun to sing as she did some pre-duel arm and leg stretches.

"_Baby, take off your coat…real slow. Baby take off your shoes…I'll help you take off your shoes..."_

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione smiled as she stood post-workout in front of the full-length mirror. She dragged a finger along the top edge of her new, black demi-cup bra, then turned around and looked back over her shoulder.

"Okay, these will do," she stated, as she checked how much bum was exposed by the high-cut lace knickers.

Fleur glanced over from her opened chest of drawers and snorted.

"They will do what, ma Chérie…drive your boyfriend insane with lust?"

"Who says that he'll get a chance to see them?"

The French witch smiled as she pulled the same-style undergarments out from her drawers and slipped them on.

"But he has not yet answered your question, no?"

"Which question?"

Fleur giggled as she walked over to the mirror and stood shoulder to shoulder with her roommate.

"Whezher 'e zinks zat your teets are too beeg," she said, exaggerating her accent.

A rueful grin grew on Hermione's lips as she compared demi-cup sizes.

"Certainly not by any comparison with yours."

Fleur expressed her disappointment with this lack of self-esteem with a playful swat on her roommate's bum.

"I think that I will remove the modesty spell from the front of your robes," she decided. "It will be proof that your boyfriend's shorts are too small for his snake."

Hermione's eyes darted towards her reflected image.

"Don't you dare!" she whispered, covering her breasts with her hands. "I'm worried enough as it is about Molly catching me wearing this."

Fleur shook her head as she pushed Hermione's hands free.

"No, you must be brave, ma Chérie! We must take our little victories over le tyrannie of Molly where we can! Aux barricades!"

Her Muggleborn roommate couldn't help but grin at the call to battle. She clicked her bare heels together, thrust out her chest, and pressed her hand across her forehead in salute.

"Oui, ma generale!"

A satisfied smile grew on Fleur's face. She returned the salute and then ordered, "Marchons!"

It took only a few moments for the two witches to throw their robes over their undergarments and tidy up the bedroom. It took quite a bit longer for anyone to figure out why Fleur and Hermione were whistling _La Marseillaise_ as they marched into the kitchen for breakfast.

**oo00OO00oo**

"Good morning, everyone," Fleur said brightly. She leaned over her fiance's shoulder and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek.

"Morning, Luv," Bill replied with a smile. "Ready to head back to work today?"

"Yes, I can't wait."

Molly shot a look of disapproval towards the engaged couple as she levitated a platter of scrambled eggs onto the kitchen table.

"Yet you waited until the last moment to show up for breakfast?" she asked.

Hermione shook her head. "Oh, sorry, Mrs. Weasley…that's my fault. Fleur was giving me some helpful hints on how to freshen up my wardrobe."

"Now there's a lost cause," Ginny muttered to herself.

"What's that, Gin-Gin?" asked Bill.

"Erm…nothing."

Hermione was too focused on Harry's reaction to catch this exchange.

"Well, I think you look very nice this morning," he offered.

"Thank you, Harry."

"I'm sure that my Ronald will think so too," said Molly.

Fleur smiled. "So where is your Ronald? I thought that breakfast was his favorite meal of the day?"

"Which meal isn't his favorite?" Ginny muttered.

The truth behind this catty remark kept the red-haired witch from an admonishment.

"I'm allowing him to sleep in this morning," Molly announced. "No need to crowd the kitchen table all at once."

Hermione assumed that the Weasley matriarch was more interested in keeping her youngest son from embarrassing himself again with Fleur at the table, but kept that thought to herself. Ginny was thinking the same thing, and would have certainly said as much out loud had Harry's familiar not chosen that moment to swoop in through the window.

"Hey, Hedwig…back so soon?" the teen-aged wizard asked, as his familiar landed on his shoulder.

"_Bark!"_

Harry laughed, choosing not to translate this response as the snowy owl held her leg out towards Molly. She quickly untied the attached letter.

"Well, we're set then," she stated, slipping the short note into her apron pocket.

"Set for what, Mum?" Bill asked.

Molly glanced at the Weasley family clock that was propped up near the stove and replied, "We'll talk about it at dinner."

Everyone was frustrated to varying degrees by Molly's lack of specificity. Nobody was all that surprised, though.

Hermione watched with a bit of envy and wishful thinking as Harry pulled a rasher of bacon off of his breakfast plate and lovingly hand-fed his familiar. There had been Ancient Rome-inspired costumes in their mail-order deliveries, and she began to daydream about being stretched out on a couch…wearing nothing but a loose-fitting toga, as Harry dangled a bunch of grapes over her opened mouth.

"Do you want some bacon too, Hermione?" Harry asked playfully.

The Muggleborn blushed with embarrassment as the question brought her out of her daydream. She had forgotten that Hedwig was there, and broadcasting her emotional state to her boyfriend.

"Erm..no thanks."

"But he does have another shoulder to perch on," Bill teased.

"I'll keep that in mind," Hermione tersely replied. Thinking that she really needed to get on some even footing, she then asked, "So where's Crookshanks this morning?"

Harry frowned a little and tilted his head.

"Erm…isn't he your familiar?"

"Yes, but he's also your roommate."

Harry shrugged. "Not last night he wasn't."

Hermione's eyes went wide.

"You mean…he wasn't in your room last night?"

Harry shook his head. "Nope. Last I saw him was last night in the orchard…looked like he was heading towards the farm next-door...maybe he spent the night there?"

"You're kidding me?"

"Erm…sorry. What makes you think that he was in my room last night?"

"Oh, my," said Fleur, as she did a poor job of hiding a smirk. She then leaned towards her roommate and whispered something in French that deepened reddish blush on her cheeks. Hermione was just about to do a "Ron" and bolt from the kitchen table in embarrassment when she picked up a new emotional broadcast from Hedwig…. poorly-restrained and poorly-concealed amusement.

Hermione's eyes darted towards Harry's.

"You were having me on, weren't you?" she hissed.

Harry held her gaze for a few moments, then broke down and released a belly laugh so intense that Hedwig had to dig her talons into his shoulder just to keep her perch. He laughed even harder when Hermione's familiar displayed a sense of comic timing and chose that moment to show up in the kitchen and curl around her legs.

Fleur caught the giggles as she figured out the prank, with Bill getting the joke a few more seconds after that. When Molly asked what was so funny, the engaged couple decided that it was the perfect time to head out to work.

Hermione glared at her retreating roommate's back and muttered, "Marchons, mon cul!"

Arthur cast a _Tempus_ spell and decided that it was time for him to head off to the Ministry as well. The kiss that he placed on his wife's cheek distracted her away from insisting that someone else explain the joke. With Fleur leaving, Molly ordered Ginny to clean out the chicken coop, then ran upstairs to roust her youngest son from bed. Before disappearing up the stairwell, she informed Hermione that Ron and she would be paired up on potions duty that morning.

This left Harry and Hermione unchaperoned for a few moments. It would have been a perfect time for a surreptitious snog, had it not come so quick on the heels of Harry's perfectly-executed prank.

"I can't believe that you pretended that I was being turned on by Crooks' tomcatting last night!" she said in a sharp whisper.

"Oh, Hermione…if I wasn't laughing about the situation, I'd be crying," he replied. "How am I supposed to deal with knowing that my girlfriend knows every time I decide that I need to rub one off?"

"But I'm in the same boat!" his girlfriend pointed out.

"You weren't last night, Sweetheart," Harry whispered.

Hermione huffed. "You make it sound like you were the victim…I was the one that was kept up all night by your pervy broadcasts."

"Sorry about that," Harry said, using a more serious tone of voice. "Just couldn't help it though…knowing that you got your outfits last night and imagining how fantastic you looked while you tried each of them on…"

"Harry…you're such a….lad!"

"Can't help it if I've got the sexiest witch of her generation as a girlfriend."

"Oh, stop it."

"So which ones did you try on last night, then?" Harry asked.

Hermione pursed her lips.

"Don't see why you need to know…given how effective your vivid imagination was working."

"Please?"

"No…I'm rather cross with you at the moment," Hermione stated with mock-primness. She glanced towards the stairs. Not hearing any one's imminent arrival, she quickly expanded the storage button on her robe and pulled out the book that Bill had given her the night before.

"I barely managed to read the first ten pages," she complained.

"So why are you…?"

Hermione pushed the book across the table. "Well, I'm not going to be able to get any farther this morning if I'm brewing with Ron."

Harry nodded as he slipped the leather-bound book into his own secret button compartment.

"Well, then…let me make it up to you," he offered. "Tonight we'll have Hedwig perch on your bed stand, and you can interrupt my reading all you want by broadcasting your pervy emotions."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Lad, lad…pervy, unrepentant lad…" She paused as a weak smile formed on her lips. "I suppose that it's a good thing, actually."

"What's that?"

"You acting like a normal teen-aged male."

Harry gave his girlfriend a puppy-eyed look and asked, "So I'm forgiven, then?"

His Muggleborn girlfriend let out a dramatic sigh and said, "Oh, I suppose so."

Molly and her rumpled-looking youngest son emerged from the stairwell before Harry could thank Hermione for her forgiveness, or ask what she was wearing underneath her robes.

**oo00OO00oo**

It was a lovely sunny morning, which only reinforced Ron and Ginny's shared belief that their mother had mastered weather modification magic…with Fleur spending the entire work day at Gringotts, there could be no Côte-d'Weasley. Molly told Harry and Ginny to grab their school books and go out into the backyard for revisions while Hermione and Ron were brewing. That they could have just have easily done their summer homework at the kitchen table under Molly's direct supervision was lost on nobody but Ron.

Once outside, Harry and Ginny walked into the small orchard and picked proximal trees to sit next to. When he opened his rucksack and actually pulled out a textbook, she huffed with disappointment. But instead of opening one of her own school texts, she pulled her smuggled Pygmy Puffs out of her rucksack and began to play with them. Harry was encouraged by how quick the red-haired witch had given up on interacting with him, and took the opportunity to both swap his transfiguration textbook out for the book that Hermione had passed on to him, and to pull out the pictures that Bill had given him the day before…pictures that he'd been far too preoccupied to examine while in bed.

The book was large enough to shield the stack of magical photographs from Ginny's view. The images were pretty much what Harry expect from a Scottish cottages, a coffee plantation, and an island retreat.

The Canadian "castle" looked more like an easily-defended keep…a relatively small and squarish stone-walled structure with turrets, ramparts and an active moat. It sat on the highest part of the island, with the ramparts offering commanding 360 degree views of the river, both shorelines, and a handful of adjacent islands. In one of the more interesting river views, a Muggle motor boat dragged a water skier from one side of the image to the other. Harry hadn't considered the possibility that magical cameras worked even when there were Muggles within the field of focus. He shoved some related questions far down on the list of things to ask Bill about, along side of his realization that his future liegeman had taken multiple pictures of the master bedrooms and en suite lavatories on each property.

A breath caught in Harry's throat when he flipped through to the last picture in the stack. It was dog-eared and faded…obviously older than the others. But it was the photograph's subject that was so arresting to the teen-aged wizard. A young boy with messy black hair had his arm wrapped around the shoulder of a house elf of equal height. They were on a sandy beach, and there were large grins on both of their faces as they stood proudly behind a fabulously-detailed sand castle. As the picture animated, the boy pointed towards a scale model catapult that sat on the sand castle's walls, and squealed in delight as the enchanted toy launched a round of gravel-sized ordinance into the river.

Harry watched the scene repeat a few times, before he turning the photograph over in search of a description. The hand-written note brought tears to his eyes.

"_James (6) and Welly, Hidden Island"_

This reaction did not go unnoticed.

"What's got you upset, Harry?"

The teen-aged wizard looked up towards Ginny and shook his head.

He could have said, "My lost childhood," or "My lost parents," or "My lost family history." And while each of these would have been the truth, they wouldn't have served a useful purpose.

So he lied.

"It's just a description of transfiguration spells that turn battlefield debris into hard shields," Harry told Ginny. "They would have been dead useful at the Ministry the night that…"

He closed the book, capturing the pictures in between the pages, and slipped it into his rucksack.

Thinking she understood, Ginny propped each of her pets on a shoulder, then held out her arms.

"Come here, you," she encouraged.

Harry couldn't decide whether the red-haired witch was actually trying to help, or was trying to take advantage of the perceived situation. Regardless of motive, he had no interest in the offered remedy.

"Thanks, Gin," he replied. "But if it's just the same I'd rather be alone right now."

The youngest Weasley considered this response, then shrugged.

"Well, we'll be right here for you if you change your mind," she stated, quickly shifting her attention back towards the shoulder-mounted bits of fluff.

"Erm…thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Harry replied, as he stood, shouldered his rucksack, and brushed off the back of his robes.

"Don't wander off too far," Ginny said, using a Molly-ish tone of voice.

Harry shook his head.

"I won't," he promised. "I'll probably end up by the pond, in case your Mum comes looking for me."

"Okay."

As Harry headed down the path that led to the green slime-covered over-sized puddle, he tried to decide whom Ginny had more effectively channeled just then…Ron and his teaspoon-sized empathy, or Molly and her lorry-sized bossiness.

**oo00OO00oo**

Rather than dwell on the photographs, Harry spent the balance of the morning with his back against the tree that Hermione had hidden behind on the day of the beach, reading a book with the slyly-subversive title "_Beings and Beings."_

The chapter devoted to house elves was enlightening. The chapters that accurately described Gringotts, the Goblins, and Goblin society, however, were damn-near explosive.

If what the book said was true, then Bill's employers were deviously cunning, terrifically powerful, and seriously underestimated by the wizarding world. It raised all sorts of questions about motivations, intentions, and the freely-offered assistance that could no longer be blindly accepted at face value. Bill had provided all kinds of help with the help of the Goblins, and there was far more help coming once he reached the age of sixteen. But was Harry just trading one set of puppeteers for another as he sought to cut Dumbledore's strings?

Ginny shouted out a lunchtime summons before Harry's blood pressure could jump to levels of concern. But he decided that this was a good thing. There was no need for worrisome speculation and jumped-to conclusions…at least not until after Hermione had been given the opportunity to read the same chapters and form her own opinions on the subject.

Worrying that there'd be little opportunity to pass the book back to his girlfriend under Molly's watchful eye, Harry hid the book under a small pile of gathered sticks and leaves. He then joined Ginny for the short walk back to the Burrow, where Harry ran face-first into a wall of barely-constrained fury. It took a few tense moments for the teen-ager to make sense of the situation.

That Hermione was angry with Ron was easy enough to see…Harry had witnessed dozens of similar instances over the years. The anger had never been so palpable, though…it was as if you could slice it with a knife. But then Harry spotted Crookshanks standing protectively at the feet of his mistress, and he understood…Hermione's familiar was broadcasting her emotions, and Harry's tuner was providing clear channel reception. Now this fact alone was worth a few hours of consideration, but the messy-haired wizard was far more interested in the cause of all this anger.

It was easy enough to suss out the confrontation, using nothing more than the cryptic lunchtime conversations completed within Molly's earshot. Not soon after Harry and Ginny had gone outside, Ron had begun to blather to Hermione about how relieved he was not to have Fleur around, and how glad he was that he could relax, knowing that he wouldn't have to worry about getting over-excited so long as he was only standing next to Hermione. It was right up there with Ron's sudden realization that she was a girl, back in their Fourth Year when he was desperately seeking a date for the Yule Ball.

What was left unsaid at the table soothed Hermione's hurt feelings far more than what Harry allowed himself to say. As they engaged in idle chit-chat, he tried to bathe his girlfriend with broadcast waves of righteous anger, empathetic concern, and reassuring support. And when Hermione coyly made a seemingly meaningless comment about sitting on Jabba's lap, Harry topped off his broadcast with a blast of unrestrained lust that severely tested the ability of Fleur's _Praetego_ spell to keep Hermione's suddenly perky points under wraps.

Molly announced early on during the lunch that it would be Harry's and Ginny's turn to brew that afternoon. Worried that he wouldn't be able to pull Hermione aside for a private chat, the black-haired teen tried to steer his secret girlfriend towards the location of the hidden book with a combination of obscure comments and a broadcast of emotions. He found ways to work the words "book," "beach," "hidden," and "tree" into the lunchtime conversation, and each time one of those words was spoken out loud Harry briefly imagined what Hermione might look like in her Slave-Leia outfit. When she figured out that these sharp bursts of lust were keyed to specific words, she tried to confirm this conclusion by imagining Harry wearing nothing more than a blaster pistol holstered on his bare thigh whenever the words "Bill," "chapter," and "house elf," were used in a sentence.

They knew they were onto something when Harry tagged the word "Yes" with a mental image of his girlfriend rubbing one off in the sitting room, and when Hermione replied by linking the phase "I understand" to her sunglass-aided memory of Harry's bare bum.

And then they traded winks and laughed loudly at the first thing that was even remotely funny, having totally forgotten about Ron's stupidity and Molly's overbearing presence (at least until the next time that they each reared their ugly heads).

**oo00OO00oo**

A/N: Thanks to all who offered thoughts and prayers when the last chapter was posted. Surgery went well.


	9. Chapter 9: Molly's Clock Part 1

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: ** I'm back on this story, after some RL issues and a diversionary game of Truth or Dare. I have a reasonable expectation that I'll focus on this story until it is completed…but I've been wrong about this sort of thing before.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 9: Molly's Clock (Part 1)**

Molly's subtle (and not so subtle) efforts to drive a wedge between Bill and Fleur had become a persistent (and often comical) part of daily life at the Burrow. This made an announcement delivered by her husband during that evening's dinner even more surprising than it would otherwise have been.

"If I could have everyone's attention?" asked Arthur, as he pushed back from the head of the table.

"That means you too, Ginny," her mother hissed.

The red-haired teen rolled her eyes as she turned her focus away from her plate-licking Pygmy Puffs.

"Yes, Mum."

Arthur cleared his throat.

"I think that it's fair to say that with all of the work that Bill here has done upgrading the wards, and the remodeling, and all of the help we've been getting patrolling The Burrow's ward lines, this has become one of the safer places to live in Britain."

Harry smiled as he raised his water glass and said, "Cheers to Bill, Fleur, and all of the other volunteers!"

Arthur nodded and raised his glass as well.

"Yes, yes…well said, Harry," he replied. "But there's another important part of our home safety plan…something that provides both reassurance and early warning. I am referring, of course, to the Weasley Family clock."

"Cheers to the clock!" Ron toasted, tongue in cheek.

"Ronald!" Molly hissed, as she pulled the charmed timepiece closer to her chest.

"What? Not like I'm going to hurt the clock's feelings, is it?"

"That's enough, Ron," his father said. He nodded towards Harry, Hermione and Fleur and added, "What we would like to do is add a few more hands to the clock face," said Arthur, quickly adding, "with your consent of course."

Hermione arched an eyebrow.

"How many hands are you looking to add?" she asked warily.

"Three," said Arthur. "One each for Fleur, Harry, and yourself."

A breath caught in Harry's throat, leaving it for Hermione to ask a relevant follow-up question.

"So this is just about our stay over the holidays, right?" she asked. "It doesn't anticipate anything more…permanent for Harry or myself…right?"

"What…like you two being adopted, or something?" Ron asked.

Arthur sighed. "This doesn't mean we're anticipating anything permanent, Hermione," he replied. He smiled wistfully and added, "Although it would save us the trouble later on if…"

"You mean _when_ Fleur becomes a Weasley, right Dad?" asked Bill.

"Hmmmph!" Molly grunted.

"We aren't trying to predict or prod any of you three into officially joining our Big Happy Weasley Family," Arthur insisted.

Hermione snorted. When Harry gave her a questioning look, she leaned over and whispered into his ear, "If Fred and George were here, I'd be teasing them right now about needing a few more hands for their new employees."

Harry acknowledged the joke with a chuckle, then turned towards Mr. Weasley, and asked, "So do you need our help?"

"Just need a drop of blood from each of you to personalize each hand," Molly replied. She cast a _Tempus_ charm, then added, "We'll have to collect that blood sometime in the next twenty minutes."

"Why is that, Mum?" asked Ron.

"Each clock hand has to soak for sixty minutes in a mixture of that blood and a dedicated potion," Molly explained. "We need to be sure that the new hands are ready to go by eight o'clock."

"Is there some magical significance to eight in the evening?" asked Hermione.

"Yes, Dear…that's the time when I told everyone who won't be here to find the safest place possible."

Harry pursed his lips. "Because…oh, you're going to have to turn the clock off to change it, right?"

"That's right," Molly replied. "I hate the thought of not knowing that everyone is alright, but…it's the only way.

"How long did you ask the others to hole up someplace safe?" asked Bill.

"Until a quarter past eight," said Molly.

"And the time for Charlie…you made the accounting for Romania being two 'ours ahead of the GMT?" asked Fleur.

Molly's face paled. Her lower lip trembled for a few seconds, before she replied.

"I'm sure that my Charlie knows well enough to account for the differences."

"I'm sure that he did, Dear," Arthur said supportively.

His wife chewed on her lower lip and suggested, "Maybe we should only take the time needed to add the three new hands?"

"Now, Mollikins," said Arthur. "As long as the clock face is open…"

Ron asked, "Are you planning on something more than just adding hands?"

His father nodded. "Your brother came up with a way to make the clock more…useful. Given the times we're living in, you hardly ever see the clock hands point anywhere other than _Mortal Peril_."

"So what's the plan?" asked Ron.

"The plan is for you and your sister to clear the table and do the dishes, Ronald," said Molly.

"But, Mum…"

"Don't but mum me, young man," Molly quipped. She turned towards Harry and Hermione and said, "We'll get the clock hands soaking in the living room."

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley," Harry replied, rising from the table. He followed Ron's parents into the living room, with Bill, Fleur and Hermione close behind. Molly emptied the contents of an owl-posted package onto the coffee table.

Bill tilted his head as he picked up the clock hand labeled "Fleur" and gave it a closer look.

"Why's this one bronze instead of silver?" he asked, nodding towards the other two clock hands that his mother had set out.

"It was bought separately," his father replied.

"That's right," Molly tersely replied. "They were out of the silver hands, and we've only know that she'd be spending the Summer with us for a few weeks."

"But she was here a few days before Hermione was, right?"

"Yes, but…we planned on having Hermione and Harry staying with us for some time, now."

"Planned on it even before my curse injury?" asked the bushy-haired witch.

"That's right…just like you did last Summer," said Molly.

Neither Fleur nor Hermione were all that happy with this response, but they chose to hold their tongue as they held out their fingers for the required blood donation.

**oo00OO00oo**

With an hour to kill while the new clock hands soaked, Bill suggested that they work on the gnome launcher. Molly had no intentions of getting anywhere close to the contraption, and insisted that Ron and Ginny stay clear as well (using the need to do dishes and clean up after dinner as her excuse). She also managed to keep her enthusiastic husband on a short leash, and put up enough of a stink for Fleur and Hermione to hold back as well (Molly not liking the idea of the two couples having an unsupervised and unfettered discussion). So while the two witches headed upstairs for an unscheduled English language lesson (and the private deconstruction of Molly's schemes), Bill grabbed his rucksack and led Harry out to the ersatz firing range.

The subsequent forty-five minutes saw advances made on a number of fronts.

Harry and Bill really did use this time to test some of Fred and George's experimental ordnance. There were several different shell casings to evaluate, as well as two distinct payloads…one liquid, and the other powder.

The liquid payloads were "portable swamps"…once released, it could transfigure solid ground or flooring into a mucky quagmire, complete with live crocodiles. Fred and George had originally envisioned the wheeze as a type of magical hand grenade; the liquid was encased in a charmed metal sphere, and five seconds after a triggering button was pushed, this inert metal container vanished, allowing the liquid spread and swampify. Loading this magical concoction into magical artillery shells required some modification…instead of releasing the payload after a fixed period of time, the shell casing needed to remain intact until the point of impact. At the same time, the casing had to be hardy enough to be safely handled and loaded into the launcher. The main goal of Harry and Bill's field test was to determine the optimal casing design and shell thickness. One of the shells "detonated" in mid-flight; and while Bill and Harry both thought it was great fun to see live crocodiles flying through the air, it made for a mess on the other end (since, unlike magical gnomes, crocodiles didn't bounce).

The powdery payload was Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, which worked best in enclosed spaces, like hallways or rooms…places without wind to disperse and dilute the product. Packing this powder into an artillery shell had to account for the weather, as well as a remote application. The Darkness Powder didn't work all that well when it was spread on the ground (unless you were satisfied with only your feet being obscured). Harry and Bill's tests suggested that contact detonation wasn't a good option. Shells that vanished and released the powder after a fixed period of time would only work if there was a way to vary the timed-release to account for travel distances. During their experiments, Harry remembered hearing or reading about Muggle artillery shells and bombs that were detonated once a certain altitude was reached. He also vaguely remembered something about a certain type of Muggle land mine…instead of exploding when you stepped on it, the mine would fly up into the air, and explode once it got four or five feet off the ground. Bill wrote down all of these ideas, and told Harry that he'd deliver their evaluations to Fred and George during the next day's lunch break.

Bill and Harry discussed other things as they tested the artillery shells. The younger wizard was curious about Bill's suggested modifications to his mother's clock, but not nearly as much as he was curious about Bill's employers. The curse-breaker was caught a bit off-guard by this interest…not because he hadn't expected the questions, but because he had expected Hermione to demand first crack at the book he'd brought home for its entry on house elves.

Gringotts had authorized Bill to speak candidly and openly about their financial interests and the support that they were now providing Harry. And so he did, echoing the opinions that were expressed in the book about the goblins deliberately underrepresent their magical abilities and knowledge. He provided a short tutorial on goblin society and culture, touching on the pervasive influence of the military, and institutionalization of violence within the workplace…especially at Gringotts.

Bill and Harry were walking down-range towards the latest exploded swamp when the curse-breaker asked, "Have you ever heard the saying that war is diplomacy by other means?"

The Boy-Who-Lived shook his head.

"It was Muggle military strategist that said that," said Bill. "Now, if it had been a goblin, he would have said that war is business by other means."

"Economic warfare, you mean?"

"No, both…at the same time," Bill replied. "When a goblin says that he'll fight to keep your business, he means that…quite literally. Blood is spilled not only between banks, but within banks."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes," assured Bill. "Take your account manager, Chokebar…fifteen years ago, he fought two other junior executives to the death to get the job, and he's killed at least four other bank employees since then."

"Wow," Harry hissed. "Wouldn't it be better to hire and fire based on how well they manage the account, more than how well they fight?"

"There's little difference when you're a goblin," Bill replied.

"So how do you fit in, then," Harry asked. "Have you had to fight that way for your job?"

"No, it's a goblin thing…I wouldn't have survived on the job very long otherwise."

"Oh, I'm not sure about that," Harry countered. "What about me?"

Bill paused for a moment, before asking, "What do you mean…you're neither a goblin nor a Gringotts employee?"

"No, but I seem to be a valued customer these days," Harry stated. "With all of the help that you are providing, and what they're doing themselves…"

"Well, your account _is_ one of the largest within the wizarding bank's portfolio."

"But why now, all of a sudden?" asked Harry. "I know that Sirius's money and properties made the portfolio significantly bigger than it had been before he…is that the only reason for the help?"

Bill frowned. "I would hope that you trust me well enough to know that I would be doing my best to help you…even if there hadn't been need to ask for a boon, or if the goblins hadn't asked me to work with you."

"Of course I believe that, Bill," said Harry. "But would you even be in the country right now if it hadn't been for the goblins?"

The older wizard shrugged. "Probably not."

Harry sighed. "I just want to know…with the helpful advice on ways to get out from under Dumbledore's control…am I just trading one set of manipulations for another?"

Bill let out a deep breath as he glanced back towards the house. The two wizards had cleaned up the latest experimental launch and were now walking back towards the launcher. He waited until they'd reached the device, then overlapped the privacy spells that he'd set up at the start of the conversation with an entirely new set of spells, and leaned against the barrel of the gnome launcher.

"When it comes to goblins and Gringotts, Harry…it's all about the money," the older wizard then declared. "It's about the money that is made off of your money, and the profits and losses that depend on whether you live to see adulthood."

Harry snorted. "Some sort of betting line for that, then?"

Bill said, "In more ways than one, actually." He glanced again towards the house, then cast a _Tempus _charm. Not liking what he saw, he shook his head and said, "It's a long story."

"How about a quick summary, then?" Harry asked.

"I'll try," said Bill. He took a deep breath, and said, "The management fees for your vaults are significantly higher than what Gringotts normally charges, but that's the way your parents wanted it…they wanted to give the Goblins a financial incentive to help keep you alive if they were both killed before you reached adulthood."

"But why?"

"Because the Ministry can levy a 100% estate tax if a witch or wizard dies without a will and without any recognized heirs," said Bill. "The Ministry also says that a witch or wizard can't write a will until they are an adult. So since you're the last Potter…"

"The Ministry of Magic gets all of my money if I'm killed before I am old enough to write a will or get someone pregnant?" Harry asked.

"Yup," said Bill. "Now, the Ministry has its own vaults, and its own goblin account managers, so it would be more of a transfer of accounts than an outright loss to somebody like the German Kobolds, or the North American Goblins. But the management fees for the Ministry's accounts are minuscule compared to what the bank gains from managing your accounts. The Ministry is also stupid and risk adverse, so there's little profit to be made on the percentages."

"What am I missing, then?" Harry asked. "Why weren't they this helpful all along, if the incentive has always been there?"

"There were individual goblins and individual departments within the bank that benefit by keeping you alive," Bill admitted. "But Gringotts as a whole…it set up hedges that limited institutional risk, and so there are also individual goblins and departments that would have gained from your death."

Harry frowned. "What kind of hedges?"

"Insurance, mostly," Bill admitted. "Do you know what life insurance is?"

"Yeah, sort of…it's insurance that pays out money if you die while the policy is in effect."

"Not bad," said Bill. "Now, have you ever heard of death insurance?"

"Death insur…you got to be kidding me!"

"Nope," said Bill. "You can also buy insurance from Gringotts that pays out money if you are still alive at the end of the policy term."

"Who would anyone want to do that?"

"The Ministry took out a death insurance policy on you the week after your parents were killed," said Bill. "Takes some of the sting out of losing the chance to confiscate your entire estate once you write out a will."

"Gringotts wouldn't have to pay the Ministry anything if I was killed before then?" Harry asked.

Bill nodded.

"So my account manager wants me alive, while his co-workers in the insurance department would be happy to see me dead," said Harry.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Bill replied, "That internal division was the main reason why the goblins never really approached you before. The bank managers enforced a hands-off policy, just to avoid running afoul of the magic within the competing contracts."

"What kind of magic?"

"Death insurance is a lot trickier to underwrite than life insurance," Bill replied. "Since, from a policy perspective, Gringotts would have gained financially from your death, the insurance contract is written in a way that prevented the Goblins from killing you themselves, or from helping someone else kill you. But at the same time, the insurance department appealed to the auditors and insisted that nothing be done to help keep you alive."

"Bank politics, then," Harry concluded. "So what changed this Summer?"

"You were right before about the influence of Sirius's money," Bill admitted. "The Black portfolio was managed under a fairly conventional fee structure. So now that most of that portfolio has been absorbed into the Potter accounts…"

"They're making even more money than they had been," Harry concluded. "And they stand to lose that much more if I'm killed."

"Basically."

"Well, that's fair enough…a bit ruthless, but as long as they are consistent."

"Consistently ruthless is actually a pretty good description."

"So what do they do when a customer is consistently ruthless?"

Bill frowned. "They don't care much for thieves and swindlers."

"What about people who ruthlessly play their games, under the same set of rules, though?"

The older wizard thought for a moment, then smiled.

"I think that there would be grudging respect for that kind of customer."

"Good," said Harry. "So tell me, Bill... becoming Lord Potter next week gets me recognized as an adult a year early, right?"

"Yes."

"And as an adult I gain full control of my vaults and my estate?"

Bill shrugged and nodded his head.

"Are the current management fees for my account set in stone?"

"I'm not sure…I'll have to get back to you on that one."

"But there's nothing that would be keep me from withdrawing all my money and closing up my vaults, right?"

Bill winced a bit. "No, although there really isn't a safer place to store your money in Britain."

"Oh, yeah, I'm not suggesting that there isn't," Harry replied. He deliberately paused for a moment, then offhandedly asked, "So who are these North American goblins?"

"What?"

"You mentioned them earlier," said Harry. "Do the goblins run the financial system over there as well?"

"For the most part," Bill replied. "Their bank is called 'Gorechunks', and it is run by a different set of goblins."

"Now that's very interesting," said Harry. "So do these two banks compete for business?"

Bill let out a loud snort. "Yeah, you could say that. Over the last five-hundred years, there's been seven different wars between the two banks."

"Real wars?"

"War is business by other means," Bill repeated.

"Are they fighting now?"

The curse-breaker shook his head. "There was a peace treaty signed the 1920's. That's why your plan isn't going to work."

Harry snorted. "What plan?"

"Your plan to gain leverage by threatening to move your money out of Gringotts," Bill replied. "The terms of that peace treaty included both a non-expansion agreement, and the creation of territorial monopolies. There's no other wizard bank in Britain for you to bring your business to."

"Well, isn't that convenient?" Harry snarked. "So what if I converted all of my galleons to pounds and moved it all into a Muggle bank?"

"Nope, Gringotts has that covered as well," Bill replied. "It owns a British Muggle bank called Prescotts, and our vault agreements stipulate that any witch or wizard that wants to transfer money into the Muggle financial system has to use that bank."

Harry scowled in frustration.

"What if I moved to France?"

"Still Gringotts territory."

"How about my houses in Canada or Jamaica?"

"Well, that's certainly Gorechunks territory," Bill replied. "But you'd still have to be a citizen of the North American Confederation to open an account there. According to the treaty signed between Gringotts and the Ministry of Magic, the only banking option for British witches and wizards is Gringotts."

"Damn, they've got us by the short and curlies, don't they?" Harry asked.

Bill sighed. "Well...it's hard for me to express an opinion, given that I am technically one of those short and curly holders."

"You know what I mean, though?"

"All that I can say is that while your banking options are limited, those options that are available to you have proven very profitable over the years."

"Yeah, I wasn't suggesting otherwise," said Harry. "I'm just worried that the Goblins will be a whole lot less helpful just as soon as I write out my will."

Bill shrugged. There were a few suggestions that he might have offered Harry, but since they ran counter to Gringotts' interests he couldn't…at least not until he was able to officially become his liegeman, and have that loyalty oath trump the oaths made to Gringotts.

"If there are any other direct questions, Harry?" he asked.

The younger wizard chewed on his lower lip.

"If Gringotts has such a tight banking monopoly in Britain, why would it even worry about losing my accounts to the North American Goblins, or to the…who else did you say?"

"The Kobolds," Bill replied. "German Goblins based in Berlin. Current territory covers Scandinavia and Central Europe."

"I can't bank with them, either?"

"Not unless you became a citizen of a magical country within its territorial borders."

"How hard is that?"

"I'm not certain."

"Wonder if I could ask for political asylum," Harry mused. "I've certainly been persecuted enough by the Ministry."

There was a lull in the conversation. Harry was waiting for Bill to respond until he realized that Bill might not be able to respond given his employment status.

"Are you going to get into trouble with your boss for answering my questions?" he asked.

Bill shook his head. "Employee loyalty oaths would get in the way if I tried to speak out of turn. And my boss has also authorized me to answer your questions, so long as they don't go too far against the bank's interests."

"Ah, okay, then," said Harry. "So if things do go to Hell in Britain…what's the easiest way for me to take my money and run?"

"Well…if you run to a country within Gringotts's territorial borders, your money would already be there, waiting for you."

"And those countries are…?"

"France, Flanders, Iberia…"

"Where again?" Harry asked.

Bill thought for a moment. "Oh, right. Wizard maps are different than Muggle maps…Flanders overlaps with Belgium, mostly…and Iberia covers Muggle Spain and Portugal."

"Do I own any houses in these countries?"

Bill thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"You've got your portfolio, but…I don't think so."

"Any reason why I couldn't buy a house in one of these countries?" asked Harry.

"I don't believe it would be a problem…especially once you take full control of your accounts."

Harry thought for a moment.

"Can Gringotts help me find and purchase a house? And could we move there once I did?"

"We?" asked Bill slyly.

"Just covering my rings," Harry said with a smile.

Bill nodded in understanding as he pulled a self-inking quill and a piece of parchment out of a robe pocket and began to jot down some notes.

"It will take more than week for us to find you a French chateau and get it all warded up," he stated.

"You're saying that we should still plan on Canada, then?"

"Yeah."

"So what _would _be the easiest way for me to move my money to North America?"

"Erm…marry a Yank witch and give her all of your money?"

Harry laughed. "Okay, then…what would be the _second_ easiest way?"

Molly's call for the two wizards to return inside the Burrow kept Bill from dancing any closer to his employee loyalty oaths.

**oo00OO00oo**

Once everyone was gathered around the kitchen table Molly said, "I'll need everyone be quiet while I work, and to stay out of my way…I want to have the clock turned off for as short a time as possible."

"Can't we stay out of your way by playing Quidditch in the orchard?" Ron asked.

"No!" Molly snapped. "Bad enough that I couldn't get everyone to come back home today…I need to know that you are in sight and safe while I am fixing the clock."

"Yes, Mum," Ron muttered.

Molly stared down at the clock face for a few moments, then pulled out her wand and cast a _Tempus_ spell. It was a few seconds before the top of the hour.

"Well, no going back now," she decided. She placed the edge of her clock on the kitchen table, then slowly rotated it until she spotted the two small screws that held the brass rim in place.

"Ah…there they are," she muttered, placing the tip of her wand against one of the screw heads. The witch glanced back at the instructions to confirm the next step, then incanted, _"Refty Roosey!" _The screw immediately twisted counter-clockwise, lifting its head away from the rim. Once unthreaded, the screw slipped off the edge and lodged itself in the thin crack between two leaves in the kitchen table.

"Fudge!" Molly hissed, watching the screw disappear from sight.

"Where?" Ron asked. "Did you put walnuts in this time!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. Harry chuckled.

"I think she was just taking the Ex-minister's name in vain," he stated.

"Never mind, young man," Molly replied, as she used an _Accio_ spell to retrieve the small brass screw. She then pulled the clock onto her lap, and caught the second liberated screw within her apron.

Molly's clock was set back onto the table with the degree of care typically reserved for souffles and unexploded ordnance. She slowly pulled the rim away from the clocks cylindrical edge, then gently lifted the clear sapphire cover away from the face. Once the clock cover was set on the table top, Molly turned her attention to the spindle that sat in the middle of the clock face. She used the screw loosening incantation once more to remove the threaded cap that sat on top of the spindle. The brass post that anchored the nine already-mounted hands doubled in length.

When Molly reached for the clock hand labeled with Harry's name, her husband cast a _Tempus_ charm and then asked, "Mollykins…I think that there's enough time to do the second stage tonight, don't you?"

The Weasley matriarch glanced up at the conjured time reading, thought for a moment, then nodded her head.

"Get the peril potion out, while I get these others hands off," she instructed.

Arthur followed orders and placed a small self-heating cauldron onto the kitchen table. He then lifted a quart-sized container out of the shipping box, and carefully poured its contents into the cauldron. Meanwhile, Molly removed the family's clock hands from the spindle, one-by-one, and placed each hand onto the table next to those dedicated to Harry, Hermione and Fleur. By the time that the Weasley matriarch had pulled off her own clock hand, the purple potion had warmed to a simmer. After a brief rereading of the directions, each watch hand was dipped into the cauldron and used to stir the potion ten times in a counterclockwise direction. Molly stirred quickly enough to get all twelve hands into the cauldron and back onto the spindle in short (and reverse) order.

"What's supposed to be different?" asked Ron.

"Ssshhh!" Molly hissed.

It took two more sternly-delivered shushes to clamp down on the questions as Mrs. Weasley replaced the clock face and reset the screws. Once she started the clock back up, each of the twelve clock hands lost their metallic luster and turned pale green. They also began to separate; Molly had centered each clock hand above "Quidditch," and once the clock was running they all moved off of that location.

The hands labeled "Harry" and "Hermione" spun slowly in a clockwise direction, with her hand directly on top of his. And they kept spinning, even as all but one of the hands quickly settled over the word "Home."

A wide grin formed on Arthur's face. "All greens…that's brilliant!"

"Something's not right," Molly muttered, as she reached for the instructions.

Ron asked, "What's going on, then…are we still in mortal peril, or not?"

With his wife's entire focus on the instruction scroll, Arthur said, "No Ron…we're still in mortal peril given all that is out there. But at the moment, our short-term outlook is good."

Bill nodded. "We've modified the clock to focus on immediate threats, and separated out location from threat levels," he explained. "Each clock hand changes color based on a person's current status…green means that none of us are at immediate risk of harm."

"What other colors are there?" asked Ginny.

"Yellow stands for a moderate risk of harm, and if you are really facing imminent death the hand would turn red," Bill replied.

Hermione smiled. "So it's an alarm clock, now?"

Bill chuckled, and nodded his head. "More or less…didn't think about adding an audible warning, though."

Fleur said, "So a klaxon would ring eef a clock hand changes color to yellow or red? I like eet."

"If and it," Hermione gently corrected.

"Something still isn't right," Molly muttered. "I could accept the idea of Percy still being at work right now, but the Twins's hands should be over _Work_ as well, and Harry and Hermione's hands are still spinning, and Fleur's isn't working right either."

Bill snorted. "Fred and George do have a flat over their shop, don't they?"

"Yes, but's that's just…it's just a flat!" Molly protested.

Arthur draped his arm around his wife's shoulder. "Maybe it's time to accept the idea that Fred and George have left the nest, Molly…even more so now that we've had them clear out their old room."

"But the Burrow will always be…"

"Charlie's hand is over _Home_," noted Arthur.

"But Bill…?"

"I gave up my flat last month, remember Mum?" the curse breaker asked.

"So it's only the new hands that are wonky," Ginny suggested.

"Why do you say that?" asked Hermione. "My home is in Weybridge, with my parents."

"Harry's home is with those Muggles, then?" asked Ron.

"More like Hogwarts is my home," added Harry.

"What about Fleur, though?" Ginny demanded.

The French witch giggled as she reached out for Bill's hand. "They say that home is where the heart is, no?"

Hermione grinned. "That was perfect, Fleur!"

"The accent or the sentiment?" asked Harry.

Hermione gently pushed the messy-haired wizard's shoulder.

"Both, you unromantic berk!" she playfully chided.

Molly was unconvinced. Glancing back and forth between the instructions and the clock, she instructed Fleur, Harry and Hermione to go out into the back yard and play a pick-up game of Quidditch. Harry's reminder that his ban had not yet been lifted was dismissed as much less important than knowing if the clock was working properly. Hermione was going to protest that she didn't care to play, before realizing that Molly's instructions were actually the best available option, given the stations available on the clock face.

Ron was quick to assign positions, insisting that Fleur, Ginny and Harry form a chaser line while he served as goalkeeper. When Hermione asked what role he expected her to play, the red-haired wizard halfheartedly released the snitch from their box of game balls and told her to chase after it while the other four were busy. She would have been more upset about this slight if it hadn't suited her purposes. As the other four drew their brooms up to ring-height, Hermione was content to "search" for the snitch with her broom hovering two feet off of the ground.

The game ended almost as soon as it began. Molly opened the Burrow's back door just after Ginny took a pass from Harry and tossed the quaffle past her brother's outstretch hand, and ordered everyone back inside. While Molly's clock looked no different upon their return, Bill informed the group that the clock hands had shifted to _"Quidditch"_ for the short period of time that they were outside playing.

Fleur and the four teenagers were shunted into the sitting room for another game of exploding snap while the three "adults" discussed the different options for fixing Molly's clock.

As the cards were passed out, Ginny asked, "So what do you think they'll do?"

Harry shrugged. "Don't know if there's much that could be done."

"Still an improvement, though," Hermione noted. "Think that the locations on the clock face could be modified?"

"What for?" asked Ron.

"To make them a little more useful," Hermione replied.

Ginny nodded. "She has a point, Ron…would Mum really need the clock to tell her if one of us was tossed into _Prison_?"

Hermione nodded. "And think about _Quidditch_…there's already spots for _Home_ and _School_, where else would somebody play?"

Ron frowned. "Might come in handy if one of us is good enough to turn pro."

"I guess," the Muggleborn witch agreed. "But if you were playing Quidditch professionally, wouldn't that be the same as _Work_?"

Ron huffed. "Well if it's such a problem, Hermione, why haven't you pointed it out before?"

Harry chuckled. "Mate, if Hermione pointed out every single thing that was illogical in the wizarding world, you'd never get a word in edgewise."

"What makes you think that I do now?" asked Ron.

Bill walked into the sitting room, and asked that he be dealt into the game. He told the others that changing the locations on the clock face was exactly what they'd been discussing in the kitchen. Once Molly was convinced that this was the best approach, she had dismissed Bill, telling him that Arthur and she would decide on how to proceed from there. Twenty minutes later, Molly interrupted the game by asking Harry if she could use Hedwig again to post a letter to the enchanter who had created her clock.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Wednesday, July 24_

Fleur was off work the next day, and the weather was perfect for another trip to her magical shoreline. Molly, however, insisted that the morning be spent working on potions in the kitchen and English-language lessons in the sitting room. She also decided that her attention was better devoted to monitoring those lessons, which limited the ability of Harry, Fleur and Hermione to have fun with their innuendo-filled practice sentences.

Molly kept half an eye on her clock all morning, taking note of how each of the clock hands moved after her modifications. Bill's and Arthur's hands shifted to _Travelling_ just as soon as they stepped into the floo, then moved towards _Work_ once they had completed their commute. Fred and George's hands didn't budge from _Home _until half past ten, and when they did, they paused only briefly above _Travelling_ before reaching _Work_. When Molly began to complain about the faulty hand movement, Hermione suggested that it wouldn't take all that long to walk down a flight of stairs from the Twins's shared flat to their store. Molly agreed, then began to complain about how late her two sons were starting their work day.

The fact that Charlie's clock hand had changed color from green to yellow after moving from _Home_ to _Work_ had been great cause for Molly's concern, until her husband reminded her just what it was that their dragon-tamer son did for a living. The fact that Percy's hand hadn't budged off of _Work _was cause for more concern, until Arthur reminded Molly that it was Percy that they were talking about.

By lunchtime, Ron and Ginny had gotten their stove-top potions to a long-term simmer stage, and Fleur had made similar gains on her English accent. With the sun still shining, Molly reluctantly allowed Fleur and the four teens to change into their swim costumes and spend the afternoon at the beach. Once beach bags were packed and Molly's modesty spells applied, the group headed out the back door and started down the path towards the pond.

Harry had planned on covering that distance by Hermione's side, but Ron insisted that he hang back a bit for some "bloke time." The Muggleborn witch was far more accommodating that either of the two teen-aged wizards had expected.

Ron let the three witches gain some distance in front of them before asking, "How much you think it'd cost to get one of Fleur's beach bags at Hogwarts?"

Harry snorted as they finally began to walk towards the orchard. "Well, it'd likely be considered an oversized package, but I imagine the post-owl charges wouldn't be too bad."

"No, I mean…how much do you reckon' it'd cost to buy one of those beach bags, with the umbrella, and the wave rope, and the rubber ducky?"

"Why don't you just ask Fleur?"

"Because…well, not much of a point in me asking," said Ron. "It's probably pretty pricey. And even if I earned enough from my share of the stove-top brewing, Mum is holding on to the money. Don't imagine she'd allow me to buy something like that."

Harry arched an eyebrow, wondering if Ron was suggesting that he make the purchase.

"Can you just imagine it, though?" the red-haired teen asked. "Seeing a bird like Lavender in a wet swim costume…without Mum's spell work blocking the view of those bodacious ta-tas?"

"Bodacious ta-tas, huh?" Harry quipped. He glanced up the path and noticed that the three witches had disappeared past the tree line.

"What, you don't think so?" asked Ron. The teen's pace slowed as his eyes began to glaze over, and his voice gained dreamy overtones.

"Maybe we could get the Room of Requirement to make a shoreline for us?" he asked. "And we could get the girls to wear Muggle swim costumes…Dean says that French birds only wear their knickers to the beach, and show off their bare…..OW!"

"You all right, Mate?" Harry asked, as he stopped and looked back towards the other wizard.

Ron shook his head as he glanced down the front of his swim costume. "Dunno…oddest thing. I was just reaching down to scratch myself…and something stung me!"

"Where?"

"Erm…down there."

"Your bits?"

"Yeah."

"Your bits got stung?"

"No," said Ron. "My fingers got stung when I touched my bits."

"Huh," Harry said, taking a look at their surroundings. They were still about twenty yards from the end of the orchard. With the girls already out past the tree line ahead of them, there was nobody else in sight.

"I didn't see any spells cast," he noted. "You got a bee crawling down there?"

Ron looked down. "Don't see or feel one…do you?"

Harry snorted. "Your Mum's spell is in the way of me seeing much of anything. And as for feeling down there…you're on your own, Mate."

"Well, I should hope so," Ron muttered. He then reached down and got stung again.

"Bugger!" the red-haired wizard hissed, as he tried to shake the pain off of his fingers.

Harry thought for a few moments, then rolled his eyes.

"Your mum's doing, I'll bet," he decided. "Did you notice how she emphasized the first syllable this time?"

"What do you mean?"

"It was _PRAE-tego_, rather than _prae-TE-go_," said Harry. "With the change and a different intent…maybe we should ask Hermione."

"You want Hermione to itch my bits?" asked Ron.

"Of course not!" Harry emphatically hissed. "Want her opinion on how much the spell effects could change." The teenager then shrugged and said, "Of course, it could be something that your mum cast only on you."

"Why would she do something like that?"

Harry snorted. "Maybe because she collected the laundry after our last trip to the beach?"

"Why would that matter?"

"Did you cast a _Scourgify_ on the way back to the house?"

"How could I?" Ron whined. "We're not allowed to do underage magic."

Harry snorted. "Oh, right…I forgot. So what were you doing last time, standing neck deep in the water with your hands hidden and a goofy grin on your face?"

"Never mind," said Ron. "Why don't you give yourself a scratch, then?"

The messy-haired teen rolled his eyes, but then decided that it was a fair enough test. He glanced up and down the path, and after not seeing anyone, reached down and lightly cupped his cloth-covered bits.

"Ouch!"

Ron grinned. "So did you forget to clean up too?"

"I didn't have need to clean my swim costume," Harry replied, wiggling his fingers. "Wonder if it's more than a wank prevention charm."

"How could you tell?"

"By itching somebody else's bits," Harry replied. "And no, I'm not willing to do that experiment with you."

"Fine by me," said Ron. The red-haired wizard then looked up the path and started to walk again. "You think we could get one of them to test it out?"

Harry shook his head. "By doing what…scratching your bits, or letting you scratch theirs?"

"Either would work, wouldn't it?" Ron asked. He frowned, then added, "So long as it doesn't involve my sister."

"That's fine by me," agreed Harry.

**oo00OO00oo**

In a relatively rare moment of male-bonding, the two teen-aged wizards agreed not to warn the other three about what they had discovered. They rationalized that the stinging charm didn't hurt that much, and agreed that Molly could have easily restricted her spell modifications to just the boys.

By the time Ron and Harry walked out of the woods, the beach sand had already been spread and Hermione and Ginny were stretching out the wave rope. While Harry had put on his charmed sunglasses just as soon as they had walked out the back door, he hadn't been able to see anything so long as Fleur and Hermione were wearing robes over their swim costumes. But now Hermione had taken off her robe, and was wearing only her neck-to-ankle swim costume as she ran towards him…which meant that as far as Harry could see, she was only wearing a few black spots over her nipples, a vertical black stripe over her cleavage, and square patch of black over her bits.

Fleur caught him eyeballing his girlfriend and slipped her hand around his waist.

"She ees very beautiful, no?" she whispered.

A breath caught in Harry's throat. He shook his head, turned towards Fleur…and quickly pulled off his charmed sunglasses.

"Just keep these someplace safe, okay?" he asked, handing her the charmed eyewear.

"You don't agree?"

"Too much for my own good," Harry whispered.

Fleur giggled. "So are you going to return ze favor, and provide the same view to her?"

"To you and her both?" Harry asked with a laugh.

"Ees it a problem?" Fleur asked.

"You'll have to ask her," Harry replied.

"Ask me what?" said Hermione, as she reached the umbrella.

Fleur answered in French. The way that Hermione seductively licked her lips needed no translation. She reached out, and untied the belt to Harry's robe.

"You don't need to be wearing this now…do you?" she asked.

Harry shook his head as his robe dropped to the sand.

"I guess not."

"C'mon, then," said Ginny, as she impatiently grabbed Harry by the arm and dragged him towards the breaking surf, where Ron was already splashing about. Hermione and Fleur waited only long enough to perv momentarily on Harry's bare bum before they secured their own sunglasses in the beach bag and joined the other three.

Harry figured that Ron would be the one to "accidentally" test the extent of Molly's spell modifications, but it only took three waves for Ron's sister beat him to the punch...by beating him to the grope.

"Ouch!" Ginny sputtered, as she pulled her hand away from Harry and tumbled into the water.

"Well, that answers that question," Harry announced, as he reached down and helped the red-haired witch regain her footing.

"What question?" Fleur asked, as she sidestepped away from Ron's poorly disguised attempt to line himself up for his own accidental crash.

"We think that Molly modified the _Praetego_ spell," Harry replied. "Ron got a nasty shock when he tried to itch his bits back in the orchard, and it looks like my swim costume is charmed to do the same."

"Well why didn't you warn us!" Ginny complained.

"Wasn't expecting anyone else to touch my bits," Harry replied.

"It was an accident!" Ginny insisted.

"Sure it was," Hermione muttered. She turned to Harry and asked, "So can you…adjust yourself?"

"Not without a shock," he replied.

"Why don't you touch yourselves to see if your costumes are charmed as well?" Ron asked.

"Een your dreams," Fleur replied.

Hermione was too far in agreement with the statement to notice the accent.

"Turn around," she told Harry and Ron, twirling her finger in a circle to emphasize the instruction.

"Awwww…." Ron complained.

Harry reached out and roughly pushed on Ron's shoulder, forcing him into a half-spin.

"Don't be a pervy berk," he hissed.

"Just having a bit of fun," Ron replied.

With their backs turned towards the three witches, Ron and Harry could only imagine what was happening when Hermione yelled, "Bugger! That stings!" They thought that it would be safe to look once they heard Fleur and Ginny both cry out in pain, but were stopped half-way.

"Stay turned around!" Hermione ordered.

"What for?" Ron asked.

"Because we need to do more testing," the Muggleborn replied.

Ron's and Harry's imaginations were allowed to roam wild as nine or ten more shouts of pain were bracketed in between giggles and bantering in French.

"That's disgusting!" they heard Ginny say.

"No…it's a deductive investigation," Hermione quipped.

"So zat ees what you kids are calling eet these days!" Fleur giggled.

"Oh, stop," said Hermione.

"Alright, they're done, you two can turn around," Ginny announced in a whiny tone of voice.

Ron and Harry were quick to comply.

"So?" the red-haired wizard asked.

"So, we need you two to reach back and touch your bums," Hermione said with a smile.

"What?"

"Just do it, Ron," said Ginny.

"Touch our own bums…right?"

"Get on with it, you git!"

Harry let out a hearty laugh as he reached back and lightly touched his bum.

Nothing happened.

He arched an eyebrow, then rested his entire palm across his cloth-covered bum without ill-effect.

"Well that's interesting," said Hermione, as she watched Ron recreate Harry's touch test.

"What?" asked Ron.

"You two can scratch your bums, but we can't scratch ours," Ginny replied. "We also can't touch our own…tops…and our…down theres."

Harry resisted the temptation to tease Ginny about her points of identification.

"So it took you three all of that shouting to figure that out?" he asked.

Fleur smiled, and shook her head. "Since Ginny already determined that she couldn't touch a wizard's bits, we decided to see eef the same penalty applied eef we touched each other's."

A breath caught loudly in Ron's throat.

"Touched each other where?" he asked.

"Never mind," said Hermione.

Ron licked his lips, and asked, "So if girls can't touch boy bits, and girls can't touch girl bits either, then we just have to test if boys can touch girl bits…"

"Don't even think of trying," Hermione hissed.

"So now what do we do?" asked Ginny.

"Seems pretty simple," Harry replied. "Just have to take care not to itch ourselves, or to get grabby when we bump into each other."

"It was an accident!" Ginny protested.

"I can't believe that Mum did this to us!" Ron complained. "What if we need to…itch?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You do the same if you have to take a pee…just run back to the Burrow and ask for your Mummy's help."

"Oh, that's just disgusting," Ginny muttered.

Harry scrunched his face up and said, "Have to agree on that point."

Hermione thought about what she'd just said, and shivered.

"Sorry."

**oo00OO00oo**

Molly's invasive spell work had a heavy influence on how the five beachgoers spent the afternoon. Fleur pulled boogieboards and swim fins out of her magically-expanded beach bag, and offered them for Harry and Ron's use. It didn't take very long for Harry to catch on, and to have a rollicking fun time catching waves. It took even less time for Ron to give up the effort (due to too much effort) and to climb back onto the sandy beach. He spread out a beach towel, and promptly fell asleep.

Ginny asked to use the inflatable beach toy again. Fleur arched an eyebrow, but held her tongue as the younger witch straddled her legs over the life-sized plastic dolphin and waddled out into the water.

Fleur and Hermione set up beach chairs and retrieved their charmed sunglasses from the bag. While the French witch popped open a bottle of wine, the Muggleborn witch watched Ginny as she watched Harry.

"Well at least that answers that question," Hermione snickered, as Fleur passed her a wine glass.

"Which question?"

"Whether Molly's spell allows us to scratch an itch with something other than our fingers."

Fleur followed Hermione's gaze out towards Ginny and snorted.

"Her boyfriends will never measure up if she insists on gaining the orgasm with something that big in between her legs," she noted.

Hermione giggled. "And the odd thing is…she doesn't even care if we are watching."

"Maybe she thinks that we can not tell what she is doing?" asked Fleur. "Or she is so excited that she can't help but rub herself?"

"I guess a part of me can't blame her," said Hermione, as she readjusted her magical sunglasses and perved on her boyfriend's seemingly bare bum.

"And which part ees zat?" Fleur teased.

"Your accent is slipping," Hermione noted.

"So is your sexual control," the French witch shot back.

Hermione snorted. "Found a way to magically adjust your sunglasses, then?"

Fleur shook her head, and playfully touched her own nose.

"I can smell your excitement, ma Cherie."

"Bah…it's not like there's anything we can do about it, though," Hermione complained.

"Oh, please," Fleur protested. "You are saying that Ginny ees better to rise above her muzzer's meddling than you are?"

Hermione snorted. "Well, she has had year's more practice, hasn't she?"

Fleur giggled, then reached over and grabbed Hermione's hand.

"I think zat there is more…how did you call it…deductive investigation…for you and your beau to undertake?"

"What are you suggesting?" Hermione asked.

Fleur gave the other witch's hand a squeeze as she touched the base of her wine glass to her left breast and began to trace circles around her covered nipple.

"Eef Ginny can rub her fanny against an inflatable toy, and if I can do zis with my wine glass…how can you rub one off without the shock? How could your lover help you? With the vibrating rubber chicken? Or maybe with another dry humping ride?"

Hermione watched Fleur's wine glass as it idly traced a circle, then collected her wits with a shake of her head.

"Fleur, you and I are close, but…I left the chicken back in our room, and I don't think we're ready to do something like that with you sitting right there. And I'm _definitely_ not going to test the extent of Molly's magic within Ginny's field of view."

The French witch giggled. "You know, eef my Bill is to be your Harry's liegeman, then it must follow zat I am to be your servante, no?"

"No, it does not follow," Hermione insisted. "But if you're offering to help…"

"Say no more!" Fleur insisted, as she set down her wine glass and rose from her beach chair. And within the space of two minutes, Ginny was slumped over her beach toy fast asleep (the side of her face magically stuck against the inflatable's neck to keep her from falling off), Ron's nap was reinforced by a stunning spell, and Harry was coaxed out of the water and into the chair next to Hermione. Fleur then pulled a cloth wind break out her bag, and staked it into place around the couple, forming a three-foot high visibility screen.

Fleur leaned over the screen from the outside, and said, "There are notice-me-not charms woven into the outside of this fabric. And there is also another bottle of wine and some cheese in the bag, if you wish to do something other than the magical research."

Hermione looked out beyond the pond and asked, "But what about the minders out on the ward line?"

Fleur smiled. "There ees just the one, I think. It should be no problem for me to keep him…distracted…for at least a little while."

"Thanks," Hermione replied. "We'll take it from here."

"Take what from here?" asked Harry, as Fleur turned and began to walk down the shore line.

Hermione grinned as she handed him his charmed sunglasses, then reached down and adjusted her beach chair to a full horizontal position. She leaned back, held her arms out open, and said, "Take the chance to see if Molly's meddling covers lips as well as fingers?"

Harry glanced over the cloth wind screen, then quickly rolled off of the chair and crawled towards his girlfriend's opened arms. He leaned down, and tentatively placed his lips against Hermione's.

The kiss was tender, sweet…and shock-free.

Harry lifted his head up and whispered said, "Brilliant!" Hermione expressed her agreement by grabbing the back of his head and pulling him down into an aggressive all-out snog.

Leaning next to his girlfriend's chair gave Harry's hands free range to roam up and down her body. But he hesitated, not wanting to push either Hermione's boundaries or Molly's spellwork. She solved that dilemma by reaching out and placing his hand against her side. Dragging that opened hand from her hip up to the base of her breast gave Hermione's boyfriend the limits he was looking for, and he enthusiastically caressed her torso while she ran her hands up and down his chest.

When the young couple had to break their lip lock for a breath of fresh air, Hermione asked, "Ready for some more testing?"

Harry's green eyes sparkled as he lightly nudged his nose against hers.

"What do you have in mind?" he asked.

"Well, there's that test that Ron proposed," Hermione coyly noted. "You know…where a boy touches a girl's bits?"

Harry sucked in a breath. "Really?"

Hermione nodded. "You don't have to risk getting a shock if you don't want to…"

Harry snorted. "Well, I really should do my bit to help with your deductive investigating, right?"

His girlfriend lifted her head up and gave Harry a quick kiss on the lips.

"There's the spirit!" she declared.

"So…how exactly did you test whether girls could touch girl bits?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Do you want to touch me, or listen to me describe how Fleur and I touched each other?"

"Yes!"

"Harry!"

"What?" he protested. "Isn't controlling external variables part of the investigative process?"

Hermione snorted, and shook her head as she grabbed Harry's hand and pressed his fingers against her cloth-covered nipple.

"Ouch!" Harry hissed, yanking his hand back.

"As expected," Hermione replied matter-of-factly. "Now, try again…only stay away from the black circles and touch the outsides."

Harry did as instructed, and was rewarded with a shock-free fondle.

"Excellent," said Hermione. "Now use both hands, and play with both of them."

A groan escaped from the witch's lips as Harry squeezed and rubbed the sides of her breasts.

"Okay…now lean down and kiss where your fingers are right now," she asked.

"Yes, Ma'am," Harry replied. He took a moment to look up over the cloth screen, then dove down and nuzzled his lips and nose against the base of Hermione's left breast. She let his lips roam for a few moments, then insisted that he shift over to the other side just to be thorough. He was quick to comply.

"Hmmm…that feels so good, Harry," Hermione moaned, as she ran her fingers through his hair. "Now see if you can kiss on top…"

Harry's lips were already moving before his brain caught up and braced itself for the shock.

"Aaah!" he hissed, as leaned back and rubbed the side of his finger against his lips.

"Darn," Hermione muttered. "I was hoping that it was just the hands that would trigger the shock."

"Erm…me too?" Harry mumbled.

"Do you want me to see if the same applies to me?" Hermione asked.

Harry reached up and pinched his left nipple. When there wasn't a reaction, he shrugged and leaned forward.

"Go for it," he said.

Hermione went for it, and spent the next few seconds kissing and nibbling on Harry's cloth covered chest. Slumping down to get her lips at chest height placed her hands within reach of his bum. She reached without thinking of the consequence…until a few seconds later, when she realized that there was no consequence to her kneading his buttocks.

"Oh, sure…nothing happens when you kiss and grope," Harry complained.

Hermione leaned back from her nibbling and asked, "Is that a complaint?"

"Hell, no!"

"Good."

They spent a few glorious minutes in that position…Hermione groping his bum and kissing his costume-covered chest, while he ran his fingers through her hair and rubbed her back. Harry didn't know what triggered the next step…whether it was the logical continuation of their joint investigation or whether Hermione was just going with the flow. He certainly didn't mind, though, when she reached down the back of his leg, and pulled his cloth-covered knee up against her cloth-covered crotch.

When this new point of contact failed to produce a meddling spark, Hermione whispered, "Brilliant!" and began to grind against Harry's leg.

"Is this the next step of testing?" Harry whispered.

Hermione shrugged. "We could see if our bare feet could touch bits, or reach down there with hands and lips, but I'm pretty certain we'd get shocked."

"Me too. So…."

Hermione pushed Harry's chest back, and used her own knee to nudge his knee out from in between her legs. He wondered if they were done playing around, until his girlfriend spread her legs and opened her arms.

"It's your turn on top, Harry," Hermione declared in a husky tone of voice.

Her boyfriend was quick to catch on, and stretched his body out against the full length of hers...until a rude shock was delivered at low points of contact.

"Fuck!" Harry hissed, as he grabbed his balls in pain. Unfortunately, cupping his shocked scrotum with his bare hand was enough to get shocked a second time.

"Bugger!"

Hermione would have scolded Harry for his language, if only she hadn't said more or less the same thing as her fanny and fingers were stung the same way.

Harry rolled evasively off of his girlfriend and dropped onto the sand next to her, with knees clamped together.

The two teens decided that the shocks were delivered whenever bare flesh or black spots came into contact with other black spots. The way to test this hypothesis would have been for Hermione to touch her breasts or bum against Harry's crotch, but neither of them were willing to risk additional pain being delivered to those sensitive areas.

"We're out of here just as soon as possible," Harry decided.

Hermione nodded, and replied, "I've read that Ontario is lovely this time of year."


	10. Chapter 10: Behind the Curtain

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: **

When life gives you plot lapses, turn them into fluffy, slightly-smutty plot lapse-ade. Thanks to godogma for pointing out the issue, and for godogma and alix33 for looking an earlier version of this update.

Guest appearances by Malice and _The Dirk of D'oh!_ courtesy of "Where the Wild Things Bank." Oh, and given the need to work around my carelessness, there will be a third part to this expanded chapter. Sorry. Wanted to end up at a point of final departure, but that was looking like a long, rambling journey from where this update starts. If it's any consolation, Molly isn't going to do anything in this chapter to infuriate a reader any more than they might already be infuriated.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who posted a review of the last chapter of this story. It's the first time that I've gotten more than a hundred responses to a single update.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**Canon Question of the day: **Did she really expect us to accept the notion that every time turner in existence (or at least within the territorial limits of magical Britain) was destroyed the night that Snuffles snuffed it?**  
**

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 10: Behind the Curtain (Molly's Clock,**_** intermezzo**_**)**

While Hermione and Harry were worried, they were not nearly as concerned and uncertain as Fleur. When she realized this fact, the Muggleborn witch asked, "Is something else wrong?"

Fleur glanced towards Harry, then shook her head and replied, "No...Nuth-zing!"

Hermione frowned, then turned towards Harry and whispered something into his ear. He nodded, then asked whether he should get a head start back to the house with Ron and Ginny (once, of course, they were revived from their magical naps). His thoughtfulness was rewarded with a tender kiss on his cheek.

Once they were woken, Ron and Ginny didn't need any incentive to leave the pack-up to others and get first crack at having their Mother's shocking modesty charms removed. As soon as Harry and the two Weasleys were down the path and out of hearing range, Hermione asked Fleur if she wanted to talk about her concerns.

"Eet….eet is zat your 'Arry can no longer trust my Bill!" the older witch replied. "And so, I will looze 'im!"

Choosing to ignore the return of her roomate's thick accent, Hermione instead pulled the other witch into a sympathetic hug. "Oh, Fleur…things are going to work out."

"You think so?"

Hermione nodded. "Even if it was more than just a memory lapse, and Bill acted more in the bank's interests than Harry's…I'm certain that he had little choice in the matter. Probably some employee loyalty oaths involved."

"Eet doez not matter!" Fleur declared. "I wheel looze Bill's love, and 'Arry wheel looze your love, and…"

Hermione's eyes widened. She gave Fleur a reassuring squeeze, then pulled away and asked, "Now what's all this about us losing our loves?"

Fleur sniffed. "Eet ees very simple. Eef 'Arry can not trust Bill's word, zen he wheel not take my Bill to be his liegeman. And eef Bill ees not 'Arry's liegeman, zen 'Arry can not grant Bill a boon. And eef a boon can not be granted, zen I must still be on 'Arry's 'ook for zee life debts. And eef I must be sitting on 'Arry's 'ook, zen there ees no room for you to sit on eet as well, even eef zee bits are dragon-sized!"

Hermione chewed on her lower lip as she thought through Fleur's logic. The end of that chain was tenuous, since it discounted the possibility of Hermione's willingness to share Harry's "hook"…but it certainly wasn't the right time to point this out. So she gave Fleur a reassuring hug, and asked her to reserve judgment before hearing Bill's side of the story.

It took a few minutes for the two witches to pack everything up and get the beach back into the bag. Hermione distracted Fleur by asking if she was going to complain about Molly's shocking twist to the _Praetego_ spell. The righteous indignation generated by this question quickly carried the two witches through the packing, and down the path that led to the Burrow's back door.

Fleur was smart enough to wait until after they had opened their dressing gowns and Molly had removed the _Praetego_ spells from their swim costumes before she launched into a loud protest over being treated as if she was one of the witch's under-aged children. The matriarch was just as quick to loudly defend her actions, stating that if Fleur didn't like the rules of the house then she was free to leave. Fleur spat back that Molly damn well knew that Dumbledore had ordered Bill and her to spend the Summer holiday at the Burrow. This really set Molly off, as she hissed about keeping Order business secret, and ordered Hermione upstairs to change out of her swim costume.

Hermione was quick to comply once she learned that Harry was already upstairs.

The bushy-haired witch glanced down the hall from the top of the stairs and noticed that the door to Ron's room was shut. She then turned towards Harry's bedroom…and felt a wash of worry as it streamed out of the opened door.

That her boyfriend was worrying over the situation was perfectly understandable. That she could now actually feel that worry was also easily explained by the fact that Hedwig was transmitting her boyfriend's emotions as she sat on his lap. He was still dressed in his swim costume, and was sitting on the edge of his bed as he ran his fingers down the owl's feathered back.

Hermione walked up to the doorway and quietly asked, "You okay?"

The teen-aged wizard looked up and shrugged.

"You can't tell?"

"Like I said back at the beach, I just think we need to wait to hear what Bill has to say," Hermione replied. "So where's Ron and Ginny?"

"In their rooms, I imagine."

Hermione looked over her shoulder and listened to a bit more of the ongoing argument between Fleur and Molly as it drifted up the stairs from the kitchen. Then she returned her gaze towards Harry and waggled her eyebrows.

"Fancy a distraction, then?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well…can't do much until Bill gets back from work, so…I just thought that if everyone else is busy at the moment, and if your spell is removed, and if my spell is removed…then there's nothing to shock us if we…you know…"

Harry snorted. "Would I be too much of a daft git if I said that I really wasn't in the mood right now?"

"Of course not," Hermione replied. "I'm probably the insensitive one just to have suggested it."

"Not that I don't appreciate the suggestion," Harry was quick to note. "It's just that aside from…things going the way that they seem to be going… with our luck we'd be caught out."

"I suppose," said Hermione, as she slumped against the side of the doorway. She stole another glance over her shoulder, then coyly asked, "Does that mean that you'd appreciate a distraction, so long as we couldn't get caught?"

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Have something in mind?"

Hermione gave her boyfriend a sly smile as she reached into the pocket of her dressing gown and pulled out her charmed sunglasses.

A breath caught in Harry's throat as he watched his girlfriend slip the sunglasses into place and give him an obvious look up and down. She licked her lips, then seductively whispered "Oh, Mr. Potter…is that a familiar on your lap or are you just happy to see me?"

Harry pulled Hedwig a little closer to his body and stammered, "Erm…."

Hermione asked, "So do you have your sunglasses handy, Harry?"

Her boyfriend's gaze darted towards his own dressing gown, which was tossed over the back of his desk chair.

"Left them in my pocket," he replied.

"Well that's good," Hermione replied in a husky tone of voice. She then shocked her boyfriend (in a figurative manner) by reaching for the sash of her dressing gown.

"Hermione…what are you…"

"Just getting as comfortable as you are," she stated, as she worked the knot in her sash free. "Nothing inappropriate about walking around the house in just our swim costumes, is there? We both still have head-to-toe coverage."

"Erm…right…we're…covered."

Hermione smiled as she let go of the untied ends of her sash, and allowed the front of her dressing gown to slip open. Harry stared goggle-eyed at the four-inch wide vertical strip of swim costume fabric that was now exposed, and tried to imagine what he'd be seeing if he was wearing his sunglasses. Hermione giggled as she turned her ear towards the hallway.

"Oh, darn…sounds like Fleur and Molly are winding down," she lamented. The teen-aged witch then casually pushed the left side of her dressing gown all of the way off of her chest and slowly dragged a finger across a very perky cloth-covered nipple.

"What are you doing?" Harry hissed.

"Making sure that it was safe to touch my bits," Hermione replied matter-of-factly. "Did you check if it was safe for you touch your bits?"

"Not exactly," said Harry. He looked down towards his crotch and added, "But I don't think that Hedwig would be sitting so comfortably right now if she hadn't."

"Perhaps," Hermione replied. "Might want to check for yourself, just to be sure."

"Maybe later," said Harry.

Hedwig turned her head 180 degrees and gave Harry a rather reproachful look. Then, without warning, she launched herself off of his lap and glided across the room towards her perch.

"Traitor!" Harry gasped, as he reflexively covered his crotch with his hands.

Setting the brief flash of uncovered bits into her long-term memory, Hermione asked, "I guess that Hedwig thought it was good a time to check too?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Maybe you'd like to double-check?"

"No maybes about it, Mister," Hermione asserted, as pushed the other half of her dressing gown to the side and exposed even more of her swim costume. She nodded back over her shoulder towards the hallway and said, "We'll just have to find the right time."

"Sounds good to me."

Acting with uncharacteristically impish impulse, Hermione suddenly dashed towards Harry's desk, and plucked his charmed sunglasses out of the pocket of his dressing gown.

"Hey!" the teen-aged wizard protested, as his girlfriend scampered back towards the door. "Where are you going with those?"

"Well, if you aren't using them at the moment, then maybe somebody else would like to…"

"Don't you dare!"

"So you do want to use them, then?"

"Why yes, I think I do."

"Then, catch!" said Hermione, as she tossed the charmed sunglasses towards her boyfriend.

Without thinking, the teen-aged wizard reached up with both hands and snagged the eyewear out of the air. He held them there for a moment, before he glanced down and realized that he'd just done a magical full Monty.

"Ooh, la la!" Hermione said with a laugh, as she reached up and pretended to play with the focal point of her sunglasses.

Harry growled as he removed his normal corrective eyewear with one hand and lifted his magical sunglasses up towards his face with the other, "I'll ooh la la you, Missy!"

"Yikes!" Hermione squeaked, as she hastily pulled her dressing gown shut.

"Hey, no fair!" Harry pouted, as he pushed his normal glasses back into place, then grabbed a pillow and pulled it onto his lap.

Ron, with typically inopportune timing, chose this very moment to open his bedroom door and enter the hallway behind Hermione.

"Hey, what's not fair?" he called out.

Hermione quickly pocketed her sunglasses, then turned towards Ron and said, "Erm, nothing much…I was just telling Harry what the fuss was all about downstairs."

Ron pursed his lips as he glanced over Hermione's shoulder towards Harry.

"Is that so?" the red-head asked warily.

Harry shrugged. "Well, it's not like we need an extendable ear to eavesdrop. You think that Fleur stands a chance?"

Ron's eyes shifted from Harry to Hermione, then back again. Then he shrugged, said, "This is my mum, right?"

The power of a full bladder then overwhelmed any lingering suspicions Ron might have had, and he dashed off towards the loo.

Hermione waited until Ron closed the door behind him before she risked spinning around towards Harry. Harry had tossed the pillow to the side and now stood up from the bed, sunglasses in hand.

"So did you like what you see?" he asked.

Hermione glanced down at Harry's crotch and quipped, "It's quite obvious that you did."

"I suppose Hedwig is still broadcasting?"

"Yeah, and so is her perch," Hermione giggled.

Harry frowned. "But…you're not wearing your sunglasses."

Hermione shrugged. "Which means that Molly's spells aren't blocking my view of your dragon-sized tent."

Harry looked down, and grinned sheepishly.

"I hope that you don't blame me for the reaction."

Hermione shook her head. She once again pulled her dressing gown open, nodded towards her chest, and asked, "That would be rather hypocritical of me, don't you think?"

Harry chuckled as he stared blatantly at his girlfriend's costume-covered perky points. He looked down towards his pair of sunglasses, and asked, "Do you think that Fleur could swap corrective lenses into these things? It's really not fair that I have to choose one or the other."

His girlfriend giggled. "You wouldn't have to choose if your near-sighted eyes were close enough to focus in on your objects of interest, would you?"

Harry's eyebrows arched.

"I don't know," he said with mock caution. He took a step towards her and said, "I'd have to be really, really close…"

Hermione waggled her eyebrows and thrust her chest towards her boyfriend. "Well," she purred, "If that's what's it takes…"

Harry nodded, and swapped regular glasses for sunglasses as he took two more steps towards his girlfriend…only to freeze when they both heard the toilet flush.

"Damn," he muttered. "I was all set to confirm your touch test."

Hermione shrugged.

"Guess you'll just have to touch yourself," she said with a smile.

Harry let out a sigh of frustration as his girlfriend blew him a kiss then ran down the hallway before Ron emerged from the lavatory.

Once inside her bedroom, Hermione leaned back against the closed bedroom door and shook her head, amazed at how much of a tease she had just been. She wondered whether Harry had enjoyed her playful (and lust-charged) distraction.

The answer came a few moments later, when a wave of raw orgasmic release blasted across Hedwig's transmission lines.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Gringotts  
_

As the cart driver pulled away, Bill looked at his watch and quietly cursed. The mid-afternoon track traffic had been lighter than he had expected, allowing him to reach the cavern that contained Chokebar's office ahead of their regularly scheduled meeting time. And with nothing on-hand to productively soak up some time, there was nothing else he could do other than steel himself for a chilly (and profane) reception as he presented himself to his supervisor's secretary.

"Good afternoon, Malice," Bill snarled, using his most guttural Gobbledegook. "I am here for my meeting with Chokebar."

The female goblin looked up from her desk and bared her teeth.

"Three minutes early, you worthless wizard shit!" she spat. "You have nothing more profitable to do with your time than wait for an appointment with your dick in your hand?"

Bill's eyes narrowed as he summoned up the courage to reply in kind.

"Actually, Malice, I'd consider shoving my dick down your throat, if I thought that you were talented enough to get me off that amount of time!"

The female goblin reached up into her hair and pulled out a knife-edged comb. She waved the blade towards Bill…then smiled.

"Not a bad retort, you ugly son of a bitch," she said. "We'll turn you into a goblin yet!"

Bill snorted. "Not if becoming a goblin means that I'd have to cut half of my todger off, just to look the part!"

"Oh, you wouldn't have to cut it, luv," the secretary said sweetly. "Plenty of girls in the steno pool would gladly volunteer to help me nibble it down to size."

The curse breaker let out a sigh. "Yes, well…I'll keep that in mind."

The smutty, yet surprisingly office-appropriate banter (which Malice had insisted was all part of Bill's on-the-job training as a Gringotts account manager) was interrupted when a crystal lit up on her desk.

"You can go in, now," said Chokebar's secretary.

Bill nodded, and kept one eye towards the female goblin as he approached the stone door.

"A little help, Malice?" he asked, as he showed the secretary his well-trimmed fingernails.

The goblin rolled her eyes as she rose from her desk and walked up to Bill.

"So is your rod just as soft as your nails, arsehole?" she whispered, as she "knocked" on the door by scratching its surface with her long, sharpened claws.

"You'll never know!" Bill whispered.

"ENTER!" a voice called from the other side of the door.

A frown formed on Bill's lips when he realized that the voice belonged to someone other than Malice's boss. That frown froze in place (along with his feet) once the curse-breaker opened the door and looked into something completely different.

"SOMETHING WRONG, WEASLEY?" a goblin bellowed.

"Oh, shite," Bill whispered. "I wasn't expecting the Board of Auditors."

"NO ONE EXPECTS THE BOARD OF AUDITORS!" a dozen goblins replied in unison.

Chokebar's secretary let out a low-pitched whistle. She patted Bill on the back and said, "Well, Weasley…been nice knowing you!"

Bill blew out a deep breath and shook his head.

"Yeah, you too."

**oo00OO00oo**

The stone-walled cavern was five times the size of Chokebar's office. Bill was too scared to wonder whether the office had been magically expanded, or if the doorway had been charmed to open into some other place. Twelve white-haired goblins wearing regal-looking robes sat side-by-side in high-backed chairs behind a thick granite table. There was a much smaller table halfway between the goblins and the doorway…a table upon which one of the goblins gruffly instructed Bill to lay down his weapons.

Bill's mind raced as he approached the small table and complied with this demand, wondering just what he could have done to have gotten him in such deep dragon shite. The Board of Auditors was something that his co-workers only talked about in hushed whispers, for fear that they might pop up out of nowhere if they were referenced too loudly. The twelve goblins oversaw all of Gringott's operations, across all of the business units and all of their operational territory. They were not the kind of body that spent their time dispensing employee recognition awards…when they appeared, underperforming employees tended to disappear. Permanently. And those that did survive a summons rarely spoke of it, which only added to the terror that was building within Bill's gut as he stepped back from the small table and out of reach of his wand and his knife.

"Curse-breaker Weasley," the largest goblin bellowed. "You have been summoned before the Board of Auditors to explain some identified account discrepancies."

"_Oh shite! Oh shite! Oh shite!"_ Bill thought.

"Yes, Chief Auditor," Bill said.

The goblin that sat to the Chief auditor's left opened a scroll and began to read.

"One hour and forty-two minutes ago, your one and only client expressed a loss of confidence in you, and in the services you provide him as a Gringotts employee."

Bill gasped. "You mean Harry? Why? How did you discov…"

"The means by which we obtained this intelligence are not relevant to this review," the goblin barked. "These concerns were also expressed by both his mate…and your mate.

"Fleur?"

"Is the identification of your mate a multiple-choice question, wizard?" one of the other goblins spat.

"Erm, no, Auditor."

"The basis for this loss of faith is still under investigation," the Chief auditor noted. "That said… previous events, combined with the fact that earlier this afternoon your mother gave your client yet _another_ reason to escape her grasp, point strongly in one direction."

"Curse-breaker Weasley!" the second goblin barked. "Two days ago, you visited three of the properties within the Potter portfolio. One of these properties was in North America."

"Yes, Auditor."

"One day ago, Account Manager Chokebar authorized you to disclose to your client the existence of the death insurance policy that was taken out on his head, and to give the client a brief tutorial on the international banking system."

"Yes, Auditor."

"Did you complete this assigned task?"

"Yes I did, Auditor," he replied.

One of the goblins sitting to Bill's left scowled.

"You did not judge it ill-advised to provide that piece of intelligence to the client?" he barked.

"It was not for me to judge the merits of a direct order," Bill replied.

"What is your opinion now?" the Chief Auditor asked.

Bill pursed his lips, then said, "I believe that this information was upsetting, and put Gringotts in an unfavorable light. However, I also believe that it would have been worse if the client falsely believed that there _wasn't_ a valid reason for Gringotts' neutral stance towards his health and safety prior to these past several weeks."

The Chief Auditor replied with an undecipherable grunt.

"Moving on, did you or did you not describe the limited banking options available to the witches and wizards who are citizens of the British Isles?"

Bill nodded his head and replied, "I did," even as he wondered about the efficacy of his privacy charms.

"And when the client asked for the easiest method of transferring his money to North America, you suggested that he…what exactly did he say?"

The goblin to the Chief's right looked down at some notes and said, "That he should marry a Yank witch and give her all of his money."

Bill gasped. "How…?"

The Chief auditor snorted. "Your privacy magic is adequate, curse-breaker…it's your attention to detail that's not worth a shite. Did you not imagine the possibility of a hidden observer being able to read lips?"

Bill slowly shook his head, and admitted, "No, Chief Auditor."

The head of the Board of Auditors sighed, and shook his head dismissively. "And so you made this statement, in spite of the fact that less than two days ago you informed the client that he was already eligible for Canadian and North American Confederation citizenship, based on the fact that his father was born there."

Bill's eyes widened as a deep breath got caught halfway down his throat.

"I…I have no memory of telling that fact to the client, Chief Auditor," he stated, his voice on the verge of cracking. "I also have no memory of learning that fact."

The Chief Auditor chuckled as he pulled three vials out of his vest pocket, each containing a single white, wispy strand.

"That's because you gave those two memories up, Curse-Breaker Weasley," he replied, setting each of the vials on the table before him. "You also gave up the memory of a conversation that led you to remove these three memories, and further led you to write out a statement that you willingly removed these strands from your head for the benefit of Gringotts."

"Oh," said Bill. "And I wasn't…there wasn't any coercion, involved?"

The Chief auditor's lips pulled back into a pointy-toothed grin.

"Let's just say that at the time of this skirmish you were involuntarily deprived of your common sense."

"Oh," Bill said again. He thought for a moment, then said, "If I might ask…?"

"Speak, Curse-Breaker!" once of the Board members hissed.

"Did this action actually benefit the bank?"

"It served the purposes of the one that took possession of these memories," the Chief Auditor stated. "As for whether this benefited the bank? That remains to be seen. The other party certainly thought so, but it is not uncommon for employees to find it difficult to distinguish corporate gain from personal gain."

"I understand, Chief Auditor."

"Do you?" the goblin challenged. "Then perhaps you would care to explain this understanding to us?"

Bill winced. Picking his words very carefully, he said, "I apologize, Chief Auditor. While I understand what you said, I would need more information before I could venture an opinion on the merits of removing these memories from my head."

"Like what, wizard?" one of the Auditors challenged.

Bill turned towards that goblin and straightened his shoulders.

"Did I share this information with more than just the Client?" he asked.

The goblin snorted. "You knowingly shared this information with the Client, his mate, and your immediate supervisor."

"Do any of these three retain their knowledge of this information?"

"We have no reason to believe that they have lost this knowledge."

Thoughts and numbers and ideas and percentages all flashed across Bill's brain at the same time He wondered why Harry hadn't challenged Bill on his NAC citizenship if his memories hadn't been erased, then decided that it was a question best considered at a safer point in time.

"Thank you providing me for this information," he finally stated.

The Chief Auditor nodded. He reached for the third vial and returned it to his vest pocket.

"You should return these two memories to your head," he told Bill. "The third will be returned at a time that best suits the interests of Gringotts."

"Thank you, Chief Auditor," said Bill. "Should I reunite these memories immediately, or…."

"After we are done here will be sufficient," one of the goblins barked.

"Yes, Auditor," said Bill. He took these instructions as a positive sign…putting the memory strands back inside his head _after_ the meeting implied that he wasn't at risk of losing his head _during_ the meeting.

"Do you believe that removing those memories was in the best interest of Gringotts, Curse-Breaker Weasley?" one of the Auditors asked.

Bill thought carefully about his response, then said, "I would not presume to know what the best interests are of Gringotts as a whole."

"What about your section of the Wizarding Bank, then?" asked a goblin.

Bill reluctantly shook his head.

"It would have made more sense, and have better served my section's interests, if the client and his…mate…had been _Obliviated_, and made to forget that he was eligible for NAC citizenship. That I was the only one to lose these memories is potentially disastrous."

"Because?"

"Because that is the most likely reason why your intelligence service has detected the client's loss of faith in my services," said Bill. "While he didn't realize it at the time, his girlfriend would certainly remember, particularly if whatever my mother did reinforced their desire to escape to Canada."

"So what do you suspect will happen now?"

"Best case scenario is that they accept the explanation about my memory loss, and hold me harmless. But they will worry about my loyalties and conflict of interests, and wonder whether anything else I might offer as advice has been co-opted…either by my employee loyalty oaths, or by those who might have their own agendas."

"And then?" asked the Chief Auditor.

Bill frowned. "Well, I suspect that he might move a large portion of his estate to a Gorechunks account in Canada, as a hedge against what might happen here in Britain."

"Even if you advised him otherwise?" a goblin asked.

"They will have grounds to suspect any banking advice I might offer, even if I am able to convince them that I was not responsible for my memory loss."

The Chief Auditor let Bill silently wallow in uncertainty and fear for a few seconds, before saying, "Your analysis of your client's reaction and near-term actions agrees with our actuarial calculations. There is, at present time, an 87% probability that he will instruct you to seek out a position within Gringotts that limits the chances for any future conflicts of interest."

Bill chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds. "Like my old job as a House of Greed curse-breaker?"

The Chief Auditor nodded his head. "Some have calculated that over the next twenty years, the profits earned from your work as a tomb raiding curse-breaker will exceed the revenue generated should you take over management of the Potter accounts."

Bill tried not to let his eyebrows drift up towards his hairline.

"What is your assessment of that calculation?" the Chief Auditor asked.

The red-haired wizard took a deep breath, and then replied, "Well, I am not an actuary, but…I suspect that those calculations must have built into them either a flattering confidence in my skills as a curse-breaker, or a pessimistic opinion on the negotiated management fees for that portion of his estate that the client keeps within our vaults."

"Some of both, actually," the Chief Auditor stated. "Of course, we are talking about a net gain to Gringotts as a whole…internally, this result would produce large profits for House of Greed, and disastrous losses for the Wizarding Bank."

"I understand, Chief Auditor," said Bill.

"There are also at least seven individuals or factions within Gringotts who hold a financial stake in your client's actions, and a half-dozen more who hold a personal grudge against either Chokebar or yourself," the goblin added. "One small group has even lined themselves up to profit handsomely if the client can be convinced to completely empty his Gringotts vaults, sell off all of his business and real estate interests in Britain, and relocate to North America."

One of the other auditors added, "Their calculations appear to be based on a faulty understanding of your client."

Bill thought for a moment, and then nodded. "Harry and Hermione might decide to complete their schooling outside of the country, but I can't see him completely writing-off Britain and leaving their friends to suffer under Voldemort's rule...especially now that he knows about the Prophecy."

The Chief Auditor nodded. "The mission of this Board of Auditors is to look out for the best interests of the bank as a whole. We normally do not intervene in the schemes and skirmishes of the different divisions and business units…over the centuries we have learned that a _laissez-faire_ approach works best for the overall bottom line."

Bill was tiring of saying "Yes, Chief Auditor," so he mixed things up by nodding his head to convey his understanding.

"But there are situations where Gringotts is best served by a timely intervention on our part," the goblin continued. "Your presence here today indicates that we have calculated this to be one of those situations."

"More than just the Potter estate is at risk should your client wash his hands of Britain," one of the other goblins said. "And those who are calculating your worth as a Gringotts curse-breaker are neglecting to factor in your membership within Dubledore's irregular militia, and the odds that you will be killed either in open conflict or after the ascension of the false Lord Voldemort and his followers to power."

"Or the odds of something even worse taking place," the chief auditor stated. "You following your liegelord to North America and accepting a curse-breaking job with our enemies at Gorechunks."

"Yes, Chief Auditor."

"So, Gringotts profits will be maximized when you are a satisfied curse-breaking employee of Gringotts, and when Harry Potter is a satisfied client that maintains a domicile within Gringotts territory and a sizeable fraction of his wealth within our vaults. Steps have been and will be taken towards those two conditions…. Bitewing?"

The goblin that sat to the immediate right of the Chief Auditor reached under the table and pulled out a brown leather satchel. He dropped the two memory vials that sat on the table into the bag, then tossed it towards the curse-breaker (who carefully caught it with both hands).

"Your new work assignment begins immediately. The contents of that bag will support this assignment. Any questions?"

"No, Auditor."

"Then you are dismissed."

Bill nodded, bowed, then walked up to the table. After retrieving his knife and wand, and tucking the leather satchel under his arm, he took three steps backwards and once again bowed deeply.

"Thank you, Auditors," he said. Bill then spun on his heels, walked quickly towards the room's only apparent exit, and opened the door.

And then he hesitated.

"Get on with it!" one of the Auditors shouted.

Bill glanced back over his shoulder towards the goblin Board, and nodded. The curse-breaker then stepped across the threshold, and stepped not back towards the goblin secretary's desk, but instead into the bright light of day.

**oo00OO00oo**

The fact that Bill spent the last hour of his work day several hundred miles from the Diagon Alley branch of Gringotts didn't register on Molly's clock…work was work, wherever in the world that effort took place. His clock hand did hover over _"Travelling" _longer than normal during the commute home, but Molly was too busy yelling at Ron to get his head out of the magical refrigerator to notice.

But Fleur certainly noticed something was different when her fiancé stepped out of the Burrow's floo connection and into her tentative embrace. He was very nervous, and was carrying a leather satchel that she hadn't seen before, and had upon him the scent of fresh air.

"You come from the outside?" she whispered.

Bill pulled back from the hug and nodded. "New work assignment," he quietly replied. He acknowledged Harry and Hermione's approach and whispered, "Something to talk about after dinner…lots to discuss with Harry and Hermione as well, if we can manage it."

Fleur nodded. "Yes, zere ees much to discuss."

Harry glanced towards the sound of Molly's shouting and frowned. "We probably could slip out the back door right now, if you've got something to share."

Bill shook his head, and replied, "Have to wait at least an hour from now."

"Why's that?" asked Hermione.

The curse-breaker craned his neck for a better view of his mother's potential approach. Not thinking it was safe to voice an explation, he instead pulled a silver chain necklace out from underneath his robes.

The hourglass charm that dangled from the end of that chain caused Hermione to gasp.

Harry eyes widened, and he whispered, "Thought we broke them all that night?"

Bill shrugged as he pulled the silver chain over his head and handed it to the other wizard. "Not unless your itinerary included a side trip to the Black vaults."

As Harry slipped the time-turner over his head and hid the charm under his robes, Hermione asked, "So why can't we go back in time right now?"

"Because my clock hand has probably been hovering above _Work_ over the past hour," Bill reasoned. "And I'm not supposed to be in two places at the same time."

Hermione pursed her lips. "Couldn't explaining why you have a time turner and what you've been doing at work be considered part of your job duties?"

Bill thought for a moment and then smiled.

"Did anyone notice my clock hand acting odd this afternoon?"

Harry shrugged. "No, but you hardly ever have a chance to see it, the way that your mum keeps it pressed against her chest."

The curse-breaker nodded. "So maybe that means that _if _we are able to sneak outside right now and put that necklace to work then sharing my story _must _have been considered part of my work."

While Bill's logic was sound, the eagerness shared by the other three to get some explanations would have likely carried the argument even if it hadn't made sense.

**oo00OO00oo**

It took the two couples ten minutes time to slip out into the backyard without raising Molly's suspicions. Once assembled, Bill led the other three towards his father's shed. He opened the door, looked inside, and hesitated.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

Bill thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Nothing, I guess…let's be quick about this."

It was easy for Harry to spot what had caught the other wizard momentarily off-guard, once they were all inside the cluttered archive of Muggle artifacts. Two-thirds of the interior was blocked off from their view by a thick wool blanket that hung from floor to ceiling.

"What's hiding behind the curtain?" he asked.

Hermione smiled. "Ourselves, I imagine."

The sound of stifled laughter coming from the other side of the curtain lent support to this analysis.

Harry rolled his eyes, and asked, "Hey Hermione, can giggles cause paradoxes?"

Fleur turned towards the visual screen, and let out a small gasp as her nostrils flared.

"What?" Hermione asked.

A wide smile broke out on the French witch's lips. Her response to Hermione's question waited until after she could jump her fiancé and shoved her tongue down his throat.

"Oh, Beel, I knew zat zere was a good reason for your lying!" Fleur gushed. "I am so happy!"

"Erm…that's good to hear?" Bill replied. "But don't I have to explain that reasoning first?"

"You must already have done so, or else I would not be smelling your arousal from ze other side of ze curtain!" Fleur declared. "Let us go back in time now, so zat we can get quicker to ze make-up sex!"

Daily use of a time-turner during her third year made it far easier for Hermione to connect the dots than either Harry or Bill. Not that this knowledge made it any easier to decipher all of Fleur's comments.

"Fleur?" she asked nervously. "Is it just you and Bill on the other side of the curtain?"

The French witch gave a Gallic shrug. "It is hard for me to tell. I smell ze strong arousal of you and 'Arry as well, but this ees ze same as I have been smelling all afternoon."

Bill arched an eyebrow. "Really, now?" he asked. "I bet that is an interesting story."

Harry shook his head firmly as he pulled the hourglass charm out from underneath his robes.

"Can't be more interesting that the story you seem to be ready to tell…shall we, then?"

When Hermione asked how all four could be taken back in time all at the same time, Bill smiled and reached for the silver chain that now hung outside of Harry's robes. A good yank caused the chain to magically lengthen, far enough to encircle all four of them so long as they squeezed together tightly.

Hermione showed Harry how to activate the time turner by twisting the charm one full turn. She then confused everyone by shouting, "Jeepers, Mr. Peabody!" just before she smashed her lips against Harry's and pulled his body that much closer to her own.

The teen-aged wizard thought that he saw the surrounding air shimmer, but it could have just been the after-effects of the kiss.

"Who is Mr. Peabody?" he asked, once their lips parted.

"Muggle cartoon reference," she replied brightly. "That was just a heads-up for the folks behind the curtain."

"What curtain?" asked Fleur, glancing over her shoulder.

Hermione broke free of Harry's embrace and started sorting through Arthur's collection of mostly useless stuff.

"Exactly," she replied. "C'mon…we just gave ourselves a Molly-free hour of time. Quicker we find the curtain and hang it up, the sooner that Bill can start his explaining."

Fleur giggled. "And ze sooner we get to start ze make-up sex!"

**oo00OO00oo**

The thought of Bill and Fleur engaging in make-up sex within that confined space, and potentially within full view, kept Harry from focusing on the task in hand. Not that this mattered all that much…Fleur wasn't in any mood to waste time searching for something that she could just as easily conjure and hang from the ceiling. Bill used that same small amount of time to erect a full set of temporary privacy wards, while Harry and Hermione cleared enough room on Arthur's work benches for the two couples to sit facing each other. The reason why Bill took the extra step of clouding up the two windows that provided natural light to the shed's interior was incorporated into his subsequent story.

As that story unfolded, the actuarial calculations that the Board of Auditors had relied upon proved themselves correct. Harry actually felt bad about putting Bill into a bad situation, but the curse-breaker was quick to assuage that guilt. He noted that he placed himself within an area of conflicted interests by asking Harry to consider taking him on as a liegeman while still working for the bank. Bill did note that he considered this more than worth the risks, given what he stood to gain, even in the face of his far-less forgiving fiancée. Fleur's anger was clearly on display as she bilingually berated Bill for his carelessness, to the point where both Hermione and Harry felt the need to rise to his defense. The French witch insisted that she needed to express her anger…if for no other reason than to justify the "make-up" part of what she expected to be a fabulous shag.

The mention of what Fleur expected to be doing towards the end of the time-turned hour brought a blush to both Harry's and Hermione's cheeks. But the fact that there was still so much to cover, even after Bill explained what had happened to his memories (and why), did help the younger couple focus their thoughts, particularly once Bill pulled goblin peace offerings out of his satchel.

The time turner had been the first bit of appeasement offered by the Board of Auditors. By rights Harry should not have had access to the Black vaults for another week, but the goblins had come up with some kind of half-baked legal justification for circumventing the Ministry's rules. Next came the passports…one British, the other Canadian, and both in Harry's name. When Hermione asked if they were real documents, Bill winced a bit and admitted that they were "real enough"…they would get him past any immigration official in the world, but the fact that Harry now possessed a Canadian passport didn't mean that he was officially a Canadian citizen. Hermione guessed that official citizenship, complete with inclusion on governmental lists and computer databases, might require a face-to-face interview with someone from the Canadian embassy. Bill wasn't sure, and also wasn't certain that he would be able to find out, given his new job assignment.

This segued into the reason why Bill had emerged from the Burrow's floo that evening carrying the fresh of scent air.

"Three weeks ago," the curse-breaker explained, "Le Banque du Gringotts foreclosed on a large agricultural estate that was used as collateral for a defaulted loan. There were some really nasty wards surrounding the property…and it was only a few days ago that my French curse-breaking colleagues brought the wards down so that the goblins could take possession. So now I've been tasked with overseeing their reconstruction."

"You'll be more of a curse-builder than curse-breaker?" Harry quipped.

Bill chuckled. "No, we've got ward crafters for the actual construction. I'll be helping with the design, and testing each layer as it's built up."

Hermione smiled. "So thieves make the best security consultants?"

"Something like that," Bill said with a smirk.

"Not that my Bill is a thief!" Fleur stated.

"Yeah, Hermione…there's a big difference between thieves and tomb-raiders," Harry quipped.

"Erm…exactly," said Bill.

Fleur tilted her head, and curiously asked, "So where is this estate?"

"Place is halfway up the mountains, and overlooks the sea."

"A leetle more specific, s'il vous plait?"

Bill nodded as he thumbed through his notes. Once he found the details, he replied, "Eastern Pyrenees. Ten miles from the Iberian border and fifteen miles east of the Mediterranean Sea. Closest city is Perpignan."

"Where is that?" asked Harry.

"In the far southwest corner of France," said Fleur.

"I've got some pictures, if you're interested," Bill noted.

While the other three shared the magical images of the French estate, Bill explained that it would take at least a week to complete the new ward scheme. Fleur thought for a few seconds before asking, "Will you still be working with Chokebar, then?"

Bill squeezed her hip from behind and shook his head. "No, the Board of Auditors believe that it would be prudent to isolate me from the competing factions, and to minimize opportunities for any more of my memories to go missing. Same for you, by the way."

Fluer twisted around so that she was facing her fiancé and asked, "How is that?"

"You've been temporarily reassigned to be my personal assistant and translator," Bill said with a grin. "Hope that you don't mind."

The French witch's response consisted of a high-pitched squeal of delight and a very tight embrace.

Hermione gave the couple a few seconds, then asked, "So she'll be traveling to and from France each day as well?"

"That's right."

In between his fiance's rapid-fire kisses, Bill cautioned, "Now, just wanted to be clear…this is a real hush-hush under the wardline job. You won't be able to visit your family, or go places other than the work site."

"Doesn't matter," said Fleur. "I will still be breathing the air, and touching the ground with my feet, and I will be wiz you, and you and I weel be hundredz of kilometers from your muzzer, and….."

"Your accent is slipping, Fleur," Hermione teased.

Hermione laughed when Bill's fiancée responded using impolite French.

"What was that?" Harry asked.

The French witch spun back around to face Harry and Hermione and pulled Bill's arm tight against her body. She then asked, "Yes, my English professor…how should I say zat in English?"

Hermione chuckled, and shook her head.

"Fleur wants me to talk to her arse, because I'm making her head hurt."

Harry cast a _Tempus_ charm and sighed.

"We've only got seven more minutes before our other selves show up," he stated. "How much time will it take for you two to cook up whatever Fleur is going to smell?"

The French witch looked at her fiancé and smiled.

"No more zan thirty seconds, I zink."

"Oh, come on, I'm not that bad!" Bill protested, over the nervous laughter that erupted from both Harry's and Hermione's lips.

"Maybe I am zat good, no?" Fleur asked.

"Even so…."

Fleur reached over and gave Bill a reassuring squeeze. "Relax, my love…I said zat I smelled your arousal…I did not say zat I smelled your release."

"Oh…well okay, then," said Bill.

"Not zat I would not enjoy making use of the rest of ze time," Fleur stated, as she ran a finger up her fiance's thigh.

The curse-breaker glanced across the narrow gap that separated the work bench that Fleur and he were sitting on from Harry and Hermione's.

"Are we good, Harry?" he asked.

The younger wizard shared eye-contact with his girlfriend shrugged. "Well…I certainly have some ideas on how to spend our remaining time, but…if you can give me at least one or two more minutes?"

"Of course."

"What's their end game, then?"

Bill pursed his lips. "You mean the goblins?"

"I mean whomever is pulling the strings over there right now."

The Gringotts employee shrugged. "Between what I can say and what I can guess…the Board of Auditors obviously want to keep you as a customer, and they would rather accomplish that goal without needing to waste my talents as a curse-breaker. Or lose those talents if Fleur and I followed you two and your money to North America."

"Who said anything about Hermione and I moving?" Harry asked.

Bill shrugged. "You have options, milord. And it would be foolish not to at least consider making use of those options, given what's happening internally at the bank."

"So they're not going to force me to stay here in Britain with my money?"

"No…I think that they're going with more carrot than stick."

"France is Gringotts territory, isn't it?" Hermione interjected. "Is this new job assignment part of the carrot, then?"

"Probably," Bill admitted. "I was instructed to design the ward schemes as if someone like Harry would be purchasing the estate. And they're going to offer to let you stay there in August, rent-free. Wouldn't be surprised if they also offer it for purchase at a discount."

Harry frowned. "From one guilded cage to another, then?"

"What do you mean?"

The younger wizard sagged his shoulders. "Sorry, just being cynical. If the goblins are keeping tabs on us here and now…close enough to eavesdrop on private conversations…how would I know that they aren't going to do the same if I did move into this French estate?"

Bill nodded. "Maybe you'll know that you're safe behind your wards because I'll be the one overseeing their construction?"

"But you won't be there all of the time," Fleur noted.

"True…look, Harry…they aren't going to expect you to buy something sight unseen, or even to give up plans to visit your other properties. And maybe it's not even worth the investment…I was barely there an hour, didn't even begin to have time to look the place over…"

Fleur nodded. "I zink zat zere are laws in my country to protect ze home buyers…some type of independent inspection…my father may be able to help…"

Hermione said, "It's worth a thought," then cast her own _Tempus_ charm.

"Five minutes left…worth thinking about later?" she asked.

Fleur's eyes danced with delight. "You are anxious for a show, 'Ermione?"

The Muggleborn witch snorted. She gestured towards the small gap that divided the two work benches that they were sitting on and said, "I would rather you bring the curtain down on any show, if you don't mind."

"Which show?" Fleur teased. "Ours or yours?"

Hermione shrugged. "I'd do it myself, but conjuration is a few weeks away in my treatment regimen."

"Ah, so it eez," Fleur agreed. She pulled out her wand, and began to raise its tip towards the shed's ceiling…but then she stopped, lowered her aim towards Hermione's lap, and giggled.

"And ze contraception spell…eet ees also too early for you to cast zat as well?"

Harry blushed deeply as Hermione gave his thigh a hard squeeze.

"Thanks for the offer, Fleur…but five minutes wouldn't be nearly enough time to make use of that kind of magic."

"Vraiment?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Four minutes thirty, Fleur?"

"Very well."

Harry nervously bit his lip as he watched a second curtain drop down from the ceiling in between the two couples. Having Hermione's hand resting high on his upper thigh didn't help matters, particularly when she asked, "Be a dear and cast a silencing charm on our side of the curtain, would you?"

"Erm…sure," said Harry. He cast the requested spell, then turned towards his girlfriend with a question on his lips.

That question was pushed off of his lips when Hermione insistently pushed her tongue in between them.

The snogged for a few seconds, before Hermione broke their lip-lock and asked, "Harry?"

"Yes."

"I hope you don't mind…I know that a girl can't always choose the right place, but this place? And with so little time, and with another couple on the other side of the curtain?"

"S'okay," said Harry. "We don't need to rush into anything that you're uncomfortable doing."

"Who said I was uncomfortable with doing it?" Hermione slyly asked.

"Really?" Harry gasped.

Hermione bit down on her lower lip, and nervously nodded.

"You don't think that I am a scarlet woman for thinking that way, do you?"

"Oh hell, no!"

"Good…you do have a birthday coming up, after all," Hermione replied, placing a tender kiss on her boyfriend's lips. She then reached for his hand and guided it towards her robe-covered breast, "So in the meantime….?"

"Yes, love?"

"We still have a touch-test to complete, don't we?"

**oo00OO00oo**

Three minutes and twenty-four seconds later, the Hermione on one side of the curtain called out "Jeepers, Mr. Peabody!"

The much-more aroused Hermione on the other side of the curtain couldn't have agreed more, as she reluctantly gave her lover one last squeeze and pulled her hand out of his shorts.


	11. Chapter 11: At Cogfir Inn

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N:** Not beta'd, but I want to get this off my desk (and get impatient readers off my back). Hopefully there are more typos than plot lapses.**  
**

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 11: At Cogfir Inn (Molly's Clock, Part 2)**

_Saturday, 27 July, Charing Cross Road, London_

In response to an annoyed (and annoying) horn, Emily Granger glanced up at the rear-view mirror, let out a deep breath, and shook her head.

"Right, around the block then," she stated, slipping her foot off the brake and setting the family sedan in motion.

Hermione's father glanced over his shoulder and frowned at the impatient lorry driver.

"There was plenty of room for him to steer around us," he declared. His gaze shifted towards the record store on the opposite side of the street, then shifted once more towards his wristwatch. "I just hope that something bad hasn't caused their delay."

Emily stopped for a red light, then said, "Relax, Roger…you'll have plenty of time to quiz your daughter about her new boyfriend."

"I'd rather be quizzing the lad about his intentions," Hermione's' father grumbled.

"Sounds as if he'd accept that quizzing if it meant that he was able to escape from that nuthouse for a weekend," Emily noted.

"Don't think that escaping from that nuthouse isn't also high on my list of things to quiz them about."

"Higher on the list than discussing the need for us to escape on a vacation of indeterminable length?"

"That too."

Emily sighed. "Just don't turn this weekend into a Spanish…."

Roger glanced over at his wife and grinned. "Go on…you know that you want to finish that sentence…"

"No doubt about what you want."

"Of course not...I want to become a lumberjack!"

"Stop, it!" Emily gently chided.

The signal turned, and she made a left-hand turn off of Charing Cross Road.

"Would have been easier if they had just teleported to the house like last week," Roger stated.

"It's _apparated_, Dear," Emily corrected. "And there was no need for them to waste the time that would have been spent driving into town."

"I suppose so," Roger said, as his wife waited to make another turn onto the street that ran parallel to Charing Cross. "Would it have been too much for the wizards to have located their entrance on a road with on-street parking?"

"Don't think parking was a real concern back in the Sixteenth Century," Emily reasoned. "Also doubt that they worry much about the modern needs of Muggles or Muggleborns."

"No argument on that second point."

Emily snorted as the intersection cleared and she completed her turn. "Does that mean you wish to debate the first?"

Roger glanced over at his wife, shook his head, then scowled as he looked out at the street ahead of them.

"Sure, it's fine for lorry drivers to double park," he stated sarcastically. "Just go around them."

"Oh, do be quiet and let me drive," Emily whined. "Unless you'd rather?"

"Well…if you'd like me too…I know how you hate driving in town…"

A snort escaped from Emily's nose. "Yes, well I hate narrowly averting death and oncoming traffic even more."

"Oh, we're back to that again?" Roger complained. "You heard Hermione…her friend's beauty is magically mesmerizing...just caught me off-guard that one time…and I got better…hardly even blinked when she came down for breakfast the next morning in that dressing gown."

Emily rolled her eyes as she waited for traffic to clear in advance of yet another turn…this time onto Shaftesbury Avenue, where a West End marquee caught her husband's attention.

Roger's lips curled into a smile as he nodded towards the theatre and asked, "Hey, as long as we are in the neighborhood, think that they'd fancy taking in a show?"

Emily followed her husband's gaze and snorted.

"Didn't you do enough last weekend to scare off your daughter's new friend?"

"What?" Roger protested. "It's _Spamalot_! It's brilliant! And award-winning, too!"

"And rather crude in its attitude towards the French?"

"Bah!" Roger scoffed. "It's the taunting Frenchman that comes out ahead in that scene."

"And the outrageous accent?" Emily asked.

Roger chuckled as he adopted that outrageous accent and replied, "Go and boil your bottom, you zon of a zilly perzon. Aaaaah blow my noze at you…"

Emily interrupted her husband's recitation. "I mean, the whole point of these visits is to help her French friend lose her accent, not to make fun of it!"

"It's just the one scene," Roger reasoned. "Think of the music!"

"Even more reason."

Roger, now in full Python fan-boy mode, began to sing.

"_I am not dead yet…I can dance and I can sing…I am not dead yet…I can do the Highland Fling…"_

"You can spend the night on the couch, too," Emily snarked.

Hermione's father let out a deep sigh as they turned back onto Charing Cross Road.

Not willing to let her husband so quickly off the hook, Emily asked, "We've seen so little of Hermione over the past few years…why would you even consider losing the opportunity to interact with your daughter for a few hours? You'd rather waste that time sitting quietly next to her in a theatre?"

"Right," Roger replied, with a sarcastic edge to his voice. "Because we had so many engaging conversations while we toured all of those bookstores and libraries last weekend?"

"That was different and you know it," Emily stated. "They needed to bring some kind of instructional material back in order to justify their escape from the Weasels."

It was Roger's turn to snort. Seeing no need to correct his wife's mangling of the Weasley name, he asked, "So it'll be more of the same this weekend, then?"

Emily's eyes widened in delight as she pointed down the street.

"Why don't you ask them yourself?"

Roger looked out the car window in the general direction of his wife's pointing. He smiled when he spotted his daughter and her friend...but he didn't smile too widely, for fear that his wife might think the French girl's beauty was once again affecting him.

**oo00OO00oo**

"Sorry that we were running late," said Hermione, as Fleur and she climbed into the back bench of the car. "Had a bit of a mess that needed to be cleaned up before we left the Alley."

"No worries, Dear," said Emily. "So where are we going?"

"The Sofitel St. James," said Hermione. "It's a hotel…supposed to be fairly close."

"Eight Waterloo Place," Fleur added. "Off of Pall Mall?"

"Oh, yes…near Trafalgar," said Hermione's mother, as she slipped the car back into the stream of traffic. "Lovely tea service…shouldn't take more than ten minutes from here."

Roger looked down at his watch. "A bit early for tea, isn't it?"

"I am sorry, Monsieur Granger," said Fleur. "But it wasn't until late this morning that I heard…and given the risk of sending you an owl…"

"More like the risk of Molly insisting on looking over our shoulder as we wrote out the message," Hermione quipped. "Fleur's family popped over the Channel for the weekend," she then explained. "That's where they are staying."

"Where we all are staying, I hope," added Fleur.

"Sorry?" Roger asked.

"Gringott's booked and paid for three adjacent suites," Fleur explained. "Zhey would be happy if your family spent the night there as well, so that our two families could become more familiar."

Roger's eyes widened, and he swallowed hard at the thought of there being more than one Veela to worry about. His wife ignored this reaction and stuck to the practical aspects of the situation.

"Gringott's….you mean the goblins?" she asked. "Not to be rude, or seem ungrateful…but why would they do that? Thought that they were rather tight with their gold."

"They are," Hermione agreed. "But they are also shrewd, and pragmatic, and more than a little worried that they're close to losing one of their most profitable accounts."

Roger was going to ask whether his daughter was talking about Fleur's family until he realized just how rude the question would be and held his tongue.

"I realize that it is short notice, and that you might have other plans," the French witch said apologetically.

"Oh, no…not a problem, Dear," said Emily. "We already knew you'd be spending the weekend with us, and hadn't made plans, not knowing what you two might be up for."

"You really wouldn't mind?" asked Fleur.

"Of course not," Emily replied, as she turned the car back onto Charing Cross and passed by The Leaky Cauldron once more, this time travelling south. "Spending time with your family sounds like a lovely idea…don't you agree, Roger?"

"Erm…yes, of course," her husband hesitatingly replied. Emily ignored this response, adding, "And it's a far better plan than what Hermione's father came up with."

"What was that?" Hermione asked.

Emily replied by pointing towards a theatre as they drove past its entrance.

"What ees Spamalot?" Fleur asked.

Hermione rolled her eyes and muttered, "Oh, bugger!"

The French witch's question was a welcome focal point for Roger's thoughts.

"You haven't heard?" he asked with a sly smile.

Emily would have reprimanded her daughter for coarse language, had she been able to actually hear it over her husband's enthusiastic explanation.

"_We're knights of the round table,  
We dance when e're we're able.  
We do routines and chorus scenes  
With footwork impecc-able  
We dine well here in Camelot  
We eat ham and jam and spam a lot…"_

"That's enough, Roger!" Emily firmly stated.

Fleur laughed as she asked, "So what ees Spam?"

Hermione rolled her eyes a second time, fearing the inevitable.

These fears were justified.

"_Spam, spam, spam, spam….D'oh!"_

Hermione giggled as her mother pulled back the elbow that had just made contact with her father's ribs.

"So, Fleur, did things get sorted out at work this past week?" Emily asked, changing the subject.

"Yes, they did, Mrs. Granger."

"It's Emily, remember?"

"Yes…Emily," Fleur replied. "I have been very busy the past several days, helping my Bill on a big assignment."

"Channeling your Inner Lara Croft, then?" asked Roger.

"Hush!" chided his wife.

"What?" Roger protested. "Hermione…you did say he goes on Egyptian tomb-raiding expeditions, right?"

"Bill is a curse-breaker, Dad," she replied with a sigh.

"This summer, my fiancé has been working for a different organization within the bank," Fleur added. "Our new secret project…eet ees…"

"It is secret, at least for a few more days," Hermione interrupted.

"What's a secret?" her mother asked. "The secret project at the bank, or the one at the Burrow?"

Hermione sighed. "Well, it wouldn't be much of a secret plan in either case, would it?"

"So we can't be trusted with these secrets?" Roger asked tersely.

"Frankly, no," his daughter replied. "You two can't defend your minds from a _Legilimens _attack."

"Do you really think somebody would try to read our minds?"

"Absolutely," Hermione replied. "Well…at least once we've given them cause to go snooping about your brains."

"And that happens later this week?" Emily asked.

Her daughter shrugged. "I don't know…Bill is in charge of our travel plans."

"And you're okay with that?" her father asked incredulously. "Not the least bit curious? Who are you and what have you done with my little girl?"

"Daddy!" Hermione whined. "Of course I'm curious, but…we're just being cautious. Harry and I still need to work on our own mental defenses."

"You're afraid that Molly can steal secrets out your heads, then?"

Fleur shook her head and laughed. "No, not Molly," she interjected. "Legilimency is a subtle magical art, requiring cunning and finesse. She does not know how to do subtle."

Emily frowned. "So her husband, then? Thought you said he wasn't the type?"

"He isn't," Hermione insisted. "It's Dumbledore that we're worried about, which is why we've really tried hard not to make waves…so long as Molly appears to have things under control, no need for him to come snooping around."

"Don't know which is more worrisome," Roger stated. "Your concerns about mind-reading headmasters, or the intentional ignorance that you've adopted as a defense."

"I hear you, Dad," Hermione replied with a sigh. "I hear you."

**oo00OO00oo**

Light weekend traffic allowed the Granger family's BMW sedan to pull up in front of the five-star luxury hotel before the stalled conversation could be revived. A doorman rushed to open doors and tipped his hat as Emily handed the keys over to a valet and informed the two men that (a) yes, they would be staying overnight, but (b) no, they didn't have any luggage to bring inside. Neither blinked at this apparent inconsistency.

There was little time to appreciate the understated (but still luxurious) fittings within the hotel's reception area. Two more people were waiting for Fleur and the Granger family at the entrance; a well-dressed middle-aged assistant manager, and a well-dressed nine-year-old girl. The petite blonde took one look at Hermione…then burst into tears, rushed up to Fleur, and buried her face into the front of her dress.

Fleur wrapped a protective arm around the young girl and asked, "Pourquoi si triste, ma petite?"

The younger witch turned her face just enough to glance at Hermione with one reddened eye, then shook her head, burst into even more tears, and pressed her face back against Fleur's belly. Her garbled response (which only Fleur was able to understand) caused the corner of the witch's lips to curl up into a thin smile.

"Ah…je comprends," she stated. Fleur then turned towards the others and said, "I am sorry…this is my sister Gabrielle, and the emotions of meeting you all are so…perhaps it is best if I take her upstairs and help her calm herself with my parents' help?"

Hermione's mom was quick to agree.

"Of course, dear…perhaps it would be better if we gave you the weekend to spend with your family…?"

"No, no…please, I wish for our two families to meet, and for you all to stay," Fleur was quick to reply. "I just need a bit of time with my sister."

Hermione pursed her lips for a moment, then reached a decision and nodded her head. She turned towards her parents and asked, "It's a nice day…why don't the three of us go for a walk?"

Roger and Emily glanced over at the two sisters, then turned towards each other and shrugged in agreement. Fleur thanked them for being so understanding. Before guiding the two witches towards the lifts, the assistant manager introduced herself, and asked the Grangers to ask for her once they returned from their stroll (as she would be the personal concierge for the two families during their weekend stay).

**oo00OO00oo**

The three slightly confused members of the Granger family waited until they had reached the Mall and began to walk down the tree-lined boulevard to start a conversation.

"So…do you know what that was all about?" Emily finally asked her daughter.

Hermione shrugged, and said, "Not really."

"Do you think it would be better if we spent the night at home?" asked Roger.

This time Hermione shook her head.

"No, there's good reason for you to meet Fleur's family. And besides…we had already planned on spending a bit of time alone with our families, so assuming that something terrible hasn't happened...and that Fleur can sort her sister out…we're good."

"I see," said Emily.

Hermione and Fleur had, in fact, hoped to use this time to discuss where things stood at the Burrow and to gain some approval for their tentative escape plans with their respective sets of parents, using their respective native tongues. In Hermione's case, it would be a continuation of the discussion that began the previous weekend.

Hermione's mother unintentionally got this continuation off-track when she asked a seemingly innocuous question.

"So, how are things going with your boyfriend, Hermione?"

"Mum!" the teen-ager whined.

"What?"

"Things are going _fine_, mother."

"You two managing to find some time to spend together, then?"

Hermione arched an eyebrow, wondering if her mother had used the word "time" intentionally.

"Well, I've told you just how much of a helicopter both Molly and Ginny have been," she replied.

"Not able to have any time alone?" her father asked.

Hermione sighed. Not being able to resist making an inside joke, she then replied, "Let's just say that we've been able to make a little extra time for ourselves."

"Not getting into trouble during those times, I hope?" Roger asked.

"No more than any other normal teenagers."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Hermione's father stated.

"Can we talk about something _other_ than my boyfriend?" she whined.

Roger chuckled. "Relax, sweetheart…we aren't badgering you any more than _normal_ parents would."

"That's enough, Dear," Emily declared. She then shifted the conversation to what she thought would be a safer topic.

"So, Hermione, you said that Fleur and you had a bit of a problem that caused your delay?"

The Muggleborn witch snorted. "Yes, you could say that…Fred and George discovered a house arrest charm when they inspected our knickers."

"What?" Emily gasped.

Her husband was a bit more articulate.

"_When_ they inspected your knickers?" Roger asked sharply. "And just what were the circumstances for that kind of inspection, young lady?"

Hermione let out a deep sigh. "Oh, Father…it's not like we were wearing them at the time."

"You weren't….!"

Emily shushed her husband, and asked, "Maybe it's best if you start at the beginning?"

The teen-aged witch rolled her eyes.

"I suppose," she muttered. "Since we were already heading to London, Fleur and I volunteered to drop off a batch of completed potions to the Twins's joke shop. While we were there, they let us use their flat to change into our Muggle attire…there's changing rooms inside the Leaky Cauldron for that sort of thing, but with Fleur being…well, Fleur…that would have created problems."

"What kind of problems?" asked Roger.

"The kind of problems that occur when a pub full of pervy wizards know that a part-Veela is disrobing behind a changing room curtain."

"Oh. Yeah. Makes sense," Roger replied, trying not to imagine that scene himself.

"Why didn't you simply wear your normal clothes under your robes?" Emily asked.

"They wouldn't have gotten past Molly's Victorian sense of decency," Hermione replied.

Emily glanced at her daughter's khaki shorts and sleeveless blouse and shook her head dismissively. She then sought some clarification.

"So you needed to change clothes, but wanted to avoid the pervy wizards at that pub…aren't these twin brothers lads themselves?"

Hermione snorted. "Complete lads," she agreed. "Their girlfriends kept them on a short leash, though."

"But not short enough to keep them from doing a knicker inspection?" her father asked sarcastically.

"Roger, let her get on with her story," Emily chided.

"Right," said Hermione. "So once we were alone upstairs in their flat we stripped down and Fleur checked for tracking charms."

"Do you have to be starkers to do that kind of magic?" Roger asked.

"Dad!" Hermione whined. "If you must know…just about every piece of clothing worn in the magical world can be charmed in some fashion, so if you are wearing four or five pieces of clothing, and the magic woven into the fabric is overlapping with our wand cores, not to mention our own magical cores…well, it's a lot easier to miss a well-hidden tracking charm."

"So you spread each piece out and analyze it separately to cut down on the background noise?" Emily asked.

"Exactly," said Hermione. "That also makes it easier to check for trackers that are hidden in our hair or toenails."

Emily pursed her lips. "Why would there be…?"

"That kind of magic doesn't hold very well when it is applied to anything that is alive," Hermione explained. "Rather devious, if you ask me…most people forget that fingernails and hair strands aren't living tissue."

Her father frowned as he asked, "Why would you need to strip down, then? I mean, take off your shoes to get to your toenails, maybe, but otherwise…"

Hermione's mum reached out and gave Roger's arm a swat.

"Think for a moment, you berk…do you really want your teen-aged daughter to talk about the kind of hair that is hidden under clothing?"

Roger winced. "Erm…right. Never mind." He then turned towards his daughter and asked, "Are you sure you wouldn't rather talk about your boyfriend?"

Emily ignored her husband's tongue-in-cheek question and asked her own.

"Fleur found something, then?"

Hermione nodded. "There were charms on both pairs of knickers that weren't supposed there," she stated. When she heard her father suck in a short breath, the teen-aged witch cut off his question by adding, "And if you must know, Daddy, many witches wear undergarments that are charmed to be stain- and odor-resistant."

"Why do you think I was going to ask that?" Roger protested.

His daughter snorted, and said, "We knew from the diagnostic that Fleur cast that it wasn't a tracking spell, but there did seem to be some type of location-based magic involved. So we asked the local experts on Molly's meddling magic to take a look."

"And they found…you said it was a house arrest charm, right?"

Hermione nodded. "It's apparently most often used by magical mothers to keep their children from straying out of bounds. One object is charmed to serve as a base or anchor, and the other object is placed on whatever you want to monitor. The spellcaster also charms a third item to notify them if the target wanders."

The Muggleborn's mother arched an eyebrow. "So whose knickers were serving as home base?"

"Mine," Hermione said with a sigh. "Best we can tell, Molly suspected that we might check for trackers, and decided this was the best she could do as an alternative."

"Aside from not trying to monitor your comings and goings in the first place?" Roger asked.

"Exactly," said Hermione.

"But what would she hope to gain?"

The teen-aged witch shrugged. "A perverse sense of self-satisfaction over her ability to keep track of us, if even imperfectly?"

"What could she tell from it, though?"

"Maybe that Fleur and I weren't doing what we said we were going to do this weekend?" said Hermione.

"That you weren't going to spend the whole time joined at the hip, working on Fleur's accent?" Emily asked incredulously.

"There's no way to tell how long the tether is," Hermione stated. "Might be farther than hip-to-hip…a hundred yards, or maybe a hundred miles if Molly thought that Fleur intended to pop over the Channel."

Roger asked, "So what sort of work-around have you two managed?"

A sly smile formed on his daughter's lips as she held out her left hand and wiggled two fingers.

"Mine are the pinkie ring…the ring next to it are Fleur's."

It took a moment for Hermione's father to process that statement as he stared at the two transfigured pieces of jewelry.

He then stammered out, "So…does that mean that you aren't wearing….?"

"Oh, hush, Roger!" his wife interjected. "Don't you think that Hermione would have packed a spare pair or two for the weekend?"

Hermione giggled. "The only time that we wear those awful things is when we're expecting to be inspected."

"What's that?" asked Emily.

"They're more like bloomers than normal underwear," Hermione explained. "Molly wouldn't have let us out of her house if we had worn our real knickers."

"When would she have been able to place that house arrest charm on them, then?" asked Roger.

"Probably when she did the laundry," his daughter said with a smile. "We throw them into the dirty clothes bin just keep Molly off track."

"Off the track of what you two actually wear while you're under her roof?"

"That's right."

"And how, pray tell, do _those_ unmentionables get laundered?"

Hermione eyes darted down towards the shorts pocket that presently contained her two magically-expandable buttons. She thought better of revealing those secrets, for fear that her mother (at least) would want to see everything that she'd been hiding from Molly.

Trying to pass off the glance downwards as insignificant, she shrugged her shoulders and coyly replied, "Magic."

Having spent more time than a father would ever want discussing his daughter's knickers, Roger tried to change course and change discussion topics by suggesting that they pop into a pub for some drinks. This led the Granger family off of the tree-lined Mall and onto the narrow streets of Victoria and Westminster.

Hermione's eye was caught by the signage for a pub called "The Phoenix," but her mother wasn't in the mood for dealing with a gaggle of loud, overweight German-speaking tourists. Two blocks further down the road Hermione once again thought that she'd found another aptly named place that was called "The Stag," only to have her father reject the idea after taking a quick look inside. Emily thought his reasoning was rather dodgy, but Roger insisted that he just wouldn't feel comfortable inside a gay bar, even with his wife and daughter in tow.

The third pub that Hermione and her parents checked out wasn't perfect, but was considered adequate for their needs (i.e. the patrons were few in number, were of mixed gender, and spoke English with mostly English accents). So Roger accepted the establishment's deficiencies (overpriced pints and an overabundance of swotty City-working twenty-somethings), and settled into a relatively private corner booth while his wife and daughter freshened up.

"So, remind me again why you've continued to put up with Meddling Molly?" he asked, after Hermione had slid onto a bench and taken a long draw from her fizzy drink.

The Muggleborn witch took in their surroundings, and after finding the privacy levels adequate, let out a quiet sigh.

"With all that we've put up with, I half-expect the answer to involve undetected compulsion charms," she replied. "But the fact is…I still need someplace to build up my magical reserves with daily spell casting, and the Ministry won't allow me to do it at home."

"Your boyfriend's presence has nothing to do with it, then?" her mother teased.

"Just a coincidence," Hermione insistence with a sly smile.

"I'm sure," Roger snarked. "And Harry is staying there because his relatives are horrid?"

"And because of the protective wards," his daughter added. "Of course, some might note that staying at the Burrow allows one of Dumbledore's most-trusted minions to monitor his activity."

"So Meddling Molly is a most-trusted minion?" Roger joked.

Emily shook her head. "Whatever happened to the little girl who trusted both authority and the printed page?"

"Hit with a cynicism charm?" asked Roger.

Hermione shook her head. "Don't need magic to bolster all of the cynicism that Molly generates naturally."

Roger nodded. "What I don't understand is why Fleur and her fiancé put up with it...surely they could move out a get a place of their own?"

"Because Dumbledore ordered then to stay there to help guard Harry."

"But none of you really trust the Headmaster?"

"No, we don't…but the oaths that Bill and Fleur took when they joined Dumbledore's group do a good job of compelling them to comply with those orders."

"Why would they do that, though?"

"What…take the oaths?"

"Yes."

"Because joining the Order was the only way that they'd have been able to get close to Harry," Hermione reasoned. "And they need Harry to grant a boon so that they can get married."

"But the boons can't be granted until Harry assumes his Lordship?" Emily asked.

"That's right."

"And that can't happen until…"

"Tuesday night, one second after midnight," said Hermione.

"What would he have to do?"

"Visit Gringotts, sign some documents, retrieve the Head of House rings from his vaults…"

"Rings…plural?"

Hermione nodded. "We think that he'll also be accepted as the Head of House Black, now that Sirius's will has been executed."

"Who decides that?"

"Magic," Hermione stated. "Won't know for certain until he tries on the Head of House ring, but between Sirius naming him his heir, and the fact that Harry's great-grandmother was a Black..."

Roger had more on his mind than family lineage.

"Is it common for one person to be the head of more than one house?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Hermione.

"And what about any adverse issues that might come with taking control of more than one family?" asked Roger. "He won't have to have a wife for each house, or some such nonsense?"

"Not if I can help it," Hermione said firmly.

The strength behind their daughter's response took Roger and Emily by surprise. Hermione's father might have decided to probe the reasons for that firmness, had her mother not made a snap decision and steered the conversation away from the topic of marriage.

"Would the goblin bank even be open at midnight?"

Hermione snorted. "Harry has an open invitation to show up on their doorstep whenever he wants."

"Part of the same customer service plan that sprung for our hotel suites?" Roger asked.

"Imagine so," Hermione replied. "The goblins do have a huge financial interest in getting Harry to assume his titles. Doing so will make him an adult, at least within the wizarding world, and that allows him to write out a will."

"Ah, yes…that avoids the inheritance scam run by the magical ministry that you were talking about last weekend," said Roger.

"Becoming a legal adult also frees Harry from any discussion of magical guardianships…at least in principle," Hermione added. "We're quite certain that the Headmaster will try some legal maneuver to overturn Harry's emancipation, once he discovers it, but as long as the family magic recognizes him as a Head of House Potter…and if we're out of the country by the time that Dumbledore finds out…and if we can convince you to be someplace safe as well…"

"That's the plan, then?" Emily asked.

"In a nutshell," Hermione replied.

"And because we can't protect our minds…you can't crack that nutshell and explain why you want us ready to drop everything and leave town at a moment's notice?" asked Roger.

Hermione sighed.

"Let's imagine that Harry and I are able to get out from under Molly's thumb, and escape to someplace safe where I can still do my therapeutic magic without the Ministry noticing," she said. "Where's the first place that Molly and Dumbledore would go looking for us?"

Roger shrugged. "We don't know where you two would run off to…so even if they showed up on our doorstep after the fact and asked us…or read our minds…it wouldn't matter…so they would leave."

Hermione shook her head. "If only it were so simple…wouldn't put it past them to put a watch on your house in case we showed up later."

"Well maybe that kind of watch would be a good thing, if you still think that we're at risk of attack because we're your parents?"

"Their watching isn't all that effective…didn't keep two Dementors from attacking Harry at his Aunt and Uncle's last Summer."

Emily frowned. "If it's that bad…should we pack our bags and start our holiday right now?"

Hermione glanced around the pub, checking for anything or anyone that might be out of place. Then she leaned towards her parents and quietly said, "We learned this week that there is a cohort of goblin warriors who have secretly set up guard at the Burrow. We strongly suspect that the goblins are also keeping watch over the house _and_ over us this weekend…might have one or two here with us right now."

Roger looked out towards the rest of the pub.

"Don't…don't be so obvious," Hermione whispered, as she reached out and grabbed her father's arm.

Emily asked, "Wouldn't it be easier to guard us if they told us that they were doing so?" Emily asked.

Hermione nodded. "Probably. But they haven't told us about the cohort at the Burrow either…at least not officially."

"Unofficially?"

"Bill was told something at work that allowed us to make reasonable inferences," said Hermione. "Told by some high-up Goblins who had to have expected us to figure things out."

"So why not be open about it?"

"Don't know, exactly," Hermione replied. "There's a lot of internal politics going on within the bank…at the same time the goblins are guarding us…they're reading our lips….and reporting what they overhear back to their bosses."

Roger frowned. "So why do you trust these Goblins, then?"

"We don't…at least not completely. We just trust their motivations."

"Which are?"

"Profits," Hermione replied. "Like I said before, they've got huge financial incentives to keep Harry alive."

"So…they're greedy bastards…but predictable greedy bastards?" Roger asked.

Hermione shrugged. "We can't trust them completely…like I said, there are factions within the bank working at cross-purposes…but at least we understand their motives. Can't say the same for certain others, unfortunately."

"Can't trust the good guys?"

"Molly is transparent enough…she wants to match Harry with Ginny, and Ron with me, and Bill with Tonks…but when it comes to the Order…or Dumbledore?" Hermione shook her head and sighed. "Let's just say that the distrust runs strong enough that we can't discount the possibility of the so-called good-guys actually engineering an attack on the house once we've escaped from Molly…just to scare us into returning to the fold and accepting Dumbledore's control."

Roger and Emily stared into their glasses as they thought about what their daughter had just said.

"That bad?" Roger finally asked.

Hermione nodded.

"And you really think that the plans that you don't know about are our best option?"

"Yes," Hermione whispered.

Emily reached out and covered her daughter's hand with her own.

"You've given us a lot to consider, Sweetheart," she said.

Hermione chewed on her lower lip. "Yes, I know…that's part of the reason why we wanted you to meet Fleur's parents…to get a different perspective, and maybe some advice…"

"What's the other part of the reason?" Roger asked. "Maybe there's a very good reason for your Mum and me to brush off our conversational French?"

The question brought Hermione out of her funk. She smiled and said, "Peut-etre."

Roger looked at the bottom of his pint glass and said, "Well then…je voudrais un autre bier!"

Emily glanced at her watch and shook her head.

"We should head back…I'd like to have time to freshen up before tea."

Her husband and daughter agreed with this assessment, and the three walked back to the hotel at a guarded pace (with Roger looking for hidden goblins behind every tree).

**oo00OO00oo**

Fleur and Hermione were again forced to dodge incoming garden gnomes when they returned to the Burrow the following evening. It was just Harry and Bill who were calibrating the pneumatic gnome launcher, which gave the two couples a brief opportunity to talk outside of Molly's hearing range (if not the hearing range of the goblin cohort that they presumed was keeping watch).

Harry was quick to pick up on his girlfriend's discontent.

"Things didn't go well with your parents?" he asked.

"No, everything was _fine_," Hermione replied tersely. "They got along great with Fleur's parents."

"It took a bit of time to bring Gabrielle around," said Fleur. "But by the end of the weekend it was if we were all_ family_!"

Hermione groaned.

"Sounds like there's a story to be told there," said Bill.

"Oh, there is," Fleur replied. "It was so sweet...as you know, my sister…she insists that she owes a life-debt to Harry."

"Which she does not owe," Harry tried to insist.

"Nevertheless, it is what she believes," Fleur countered. "And so she had been thinking that she must fight any woman who would get in the way of repaying that debt. But when we arrived at the hotel, and Gabrielle saw Hermione? She believed at that very instant that all hope was lost and she burst into tears!"

"And she believed that because…?"

"Because Gabrielle insists that she could see that my soul is already wrapped around yours, Harry," Hermione said with a sigh.

There was a moment of shared silence, before Harry decided to quietly ask, "So you don't think that's possible?"

Hermione quickly released what her boyfriend was thinking, and tried to counter it by pulling him into a hug.

"Oh, Harry," she whispered into his ear. "The thought of our souls being wrapped around each other's is lovely…almost as lovely as the thought of my legs wrapped around yours, but…"

"But you don't think…?" Harry began to ask. Thinking it best if he broke an embrace that might be spotted from a window, he stepped back and turned towards Fleur. "Is seeing wrapped souls a special Veela trait, or something?"

Fleur giggled. "Not in the literal sense, but it is true that we have a certain intuition about these things. My sister also thinks that she is touched by a bit of The Sight…"

"She's a bit touched alright," Hermione whispered to herself.

"Hush now, Hermione...you two were getting along so well today...just like _family_!" said Fleur.

"So what changed her mood?" Harry asked.

"Gabrielle's definition of family," Hermione stated.

Bill asked, "Why would that matter?"

"Because Gabrielle's definition of family apparently extends far enough outwards to include mistresses or second wives," Hermione declared with a fair bit of exasperation.

Harry thought about this response for a moment, then let out a groan.

"Which means that even with Hermione and me being together that she'll still think that I am on the hook?"

Hermione sighed and nodded her head. "By dinnertime last night she was calling me her Alpha."

Fleur giggled. "At least I have convinced her that she must wait a few more years before she crawls into Harry's bed!"

Hermione snorted. "Wished you'd done the same when it came to her crawling into my bed last night!"

Harry groaned a second time as he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his fingers. When he heard Bill begin to chuckle, he tilted his head towards the other wizard and asked, "Not worried about laughing at your future liege lord's expense?"

"Oh, no," Bill quickly replied, "That's a _'if I wasn't laughing I would be crying' _kind of laugh, milord. I'll be in the same boat, remember?"

"But not in the same bed, I hope," Harry snarked.

Hermione glanced down at her wristwatch and shook her head. "Enough of this…we should be heading inside before Molly get too suspicious."

As the four began the slow walk back to the Burrow, Fleur asked, "So how were things around here?"

Bill shrugged. "Same as last weekend…Mum invited Tonks to dinner again, and Ginny was hovering around Harry, and Ron was…well, Ron."

"Sorry to hear that," Hermione offered. "Molly didn't seem alarmed over anything?"

Harry shook his head. "No more than usual…caught her tracking charms, then?"

Fleur glanced back towards Harry and shook her head. "Must have, if she didn't show any concern."

"But aren't you worried that she'll figure out that you disabled them?"

"I'll argue that we should be happy we disabled them, if she complains," Fleur responded. "After all, we would not have known who had placed them upon us, or when. We could have been leading the Death Eaters straight to Hermione's parents, for all we knew."

"Makes sense to me," said Bill. "Now whether it will make sense to Mum is a different story."

"Doesn't matter," said Hermione. "We didn't disable them…just worked around them. They're still active."

"Really?" asked Harry.

Seeing how close they were to the Burrow, Bill thought it worth interrupting.

"So other than Gabrielle planning Harry's second marriage…the weekend went as planned?" he asked.

Hermione nodded in agreement. "My parents will be ready to go…wherever you're planning on them going, and whenever you plan on sending them there."

"Wow…how were you able to do that?"

"Just used logic, and told them as much as we could."

Bill snorted. "Logic…now why I haven't I tried that approach?"

"Because you're smart enough to know that it wouldn't matter?" Fleur asked.

The sight of his mother emerging from an opened front door prevented Bill from doing anything more than mentally agree with his fiancee's assessment.

**oo00OO00oo**

In hindsight, they should have worried more about the small package that was owl-delivered to the Burrow that night. Molly was quick to pocket the package, and fended off questions regarding its content. Nobody thought much about this, though...given the proximity to Harry's birthday…even after Molly asked to borrow Hedwig again and posted a letter to Charlie. So the teen-agers forgot all about owl-delivery…until it was put to use two days later, on the eve of Harry's birthday.

**oo00OO00oo**

Having played out the next six moves in his head, Ron Weasley tore his eyes away from the chess board just long enough to gaze longingly towards the short hallway that connected sitting room to kitchen.

"What's taking her so long?" he whined. "I'm hungry."

Ron's father looked over the top of his newspaper and replied, "Oh, for Merlin's sake…we just finished dinner twenty minutes ago!"

"But we weren't allowed to finish the pudding!"

"You had plenty enough to eat before that point, and more than enough time to eat it," Arthur replied. "Now sit there quietly and finish your game. Your mother will be finished when she's finished."

"Oh, alright," Ron muttered, his focus shifting as Bill slowly reached for his own queen.

On the other side of the sitting room, Hermione looked up from her book and smiled. Her boyfriend, who was sitting on the floor with his back resting against the sofa's arm, glanced back over his shoulder and winked. She strongly suspected that they were both thinking the same thing…that it was nice to see someone other than Molly or Hermione keeping Ron in line.

Not that Molly's overbearing supervision wasn't still in play at that moment.

An end-of-the day meeting at the Ministry had run long, and kept Arthur forty minutes beyond his normal quitting time. The corresponding delay in calling everyone to the Burrow's dinner table pushed the end of the evening meal right up against the 7pm "safety hour" that Molly had established so that she might once again modify her clock while her dispersed children were in safe locations. Ron's protests about not being allowed to finish his pudding were ignored as the Weasley matriarch ordered everyone else into the sitting room. Arthur was charged with keeping an eye on everyone while the clock was deactivated. That he kept watch while his face hidden behind an opened newspaper said more about his trust in The Burrow's wards than his unwillingness to be ordered about by his wife. Bill got roped into a game of chess with his younger brother, while Ginny played with her fluffy pets and Harry, Hermione, and Fleur each chose to pass the time with a good book in hand.

Molly claimed that having everyone look over her shoulder had been too distracting the last time she had worked on the magical device. This explanation was just plausible enough to keep a lid on anyone's suspicions about ulterior motives…right up until the klaxons began to blare.

_**Vvvverp! Scarlet Alert! Vvvverp! Scarlet Alert! Vvvverp! **_

Harry's gaze darted towards the kitchen entrance. He asked, "What in Merlin's name is going on in there?" but nobody heard the question, between the loud alarm and Molly shrieking, "WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME IS GOING ON IN THERE!"

Arthur closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, then slowly expelled it as he dropped his paper to the side of his chair.

"Something wrong, Dear?" he called out.

Molly burst into the sitting room with a wild look on her face and the clock pressed against her chest. Despite the noise-dampening effects of her more than ample bosom, it was clear to all that it was the clock that was raising the "SCARLET ALERT!" alarm.

The Weasley matriarch quickly surveyed the room, noting who was sitting where and doing what. A breath caught in her throat, and remained lodged there for a few seconds as she held her clock out and rechecked the status of each hand. Molly frowned, shook her head, then spun on her heels and rushed out of the room just as quickly as she had entered.

"What the hell?" Bill demanded.

"That's a very good question," said Arthur, rising from his chair.

Ron nodded in agreement as he looked down at the chessboard and announced, "Mate in seven."

"Where do you think you're going?" Bill asked, as Ron pushed his chair away from the game board.

"To finish my pudding," the younger wizard replied, as they heard Molly shout out Fred and George's names above the klaxon.

"Good enough reason, I suppose," Arthur stated. He let his youngest son pass in front of him, then caught everyone else's attention and nodded towards the kitchen.

"C'mon, then, let's see what the fuss is all about."

While nobody needed a second invitation, some did need a bit more time than others to follow Arthur's lead.

"Coming, Harry?" asked Hermione from the doorway.

Her boyfriend winced a bit as rose up off the floor and stretched.

"Yeah, in a bit…my leg has cramped up."

A second round of shouts from the kitchen caused Hermione to glance back over her shoulder. She snorted when she took the time to mentally translate the words that had been shouted using French.

"What?"

"Fleur's not very happy about whatever Molly has done to the clock."

"Go on, then," Harry said. "I'll be right there."

Hermione said, "Okay," and dashed towards the clamor.

The raven-haired wizard shook his head at the same time that he shook out the stiffness in his leg. He took two steps towards the kitchen, then stopped, having spotted some movement out in the front yard out of the corner of his eye. With thoughts of diversions and attacks springing to mind, Harry crouched down, drew his wand, and crept towards the sitting room's front windows for a better view. He cautiously raised his head high enough to glance outside…then quickly ducked back down as his brain processed what he had just seen.

The teen-aged wizard sucked in a deep breath as he turned back towards the kitchen entrance and winnowed one raised voice from another.

Couldn't have been what he thought he'd seen. But if it wasn't, then…_what the fuck_?

Harry cautiously peeked up above the window sill…and gasped.

And then he waved his hand.

"Harry, get in here!" Hermione yelled from the kitchen. "You've got to see this to believe it!"

The teen-aged wizard's head swiveled sharply towards Hermione's call. He sighed, then swore under his breath as he pocketed his wand and stood to full height.

"Couldn't have said it any better myself," he thought.

**oo00OO00oo**

When Harry entered the kitchen, Molly was on hands and knees in front of the floo connection (something that Harry definitely did not want to see again). Hermione, Bill and Fleur were hurling pointed questions towards Arthur…or at least it looked that way…the privacy ward that shielded them from the wailing siren also kept their comments from leaking out.

Ginny and Ron were standing to one side with silly grins on their faces.

Harry walked over, grabbed his friend's arm and asked, "What's going on?"

The red-haired wizard pointed towards his mother's clock, which was sitting face up on the kitchen table.

"There's supposed to be some serious shagging going on right now," he quipped.

"What?"

"Take a look!"

Harry dug his fingertips into his ears to dampen the noise as he approached the magical device. All of the clock hands were green, which meant that everyone was relatively safe from harm.

At least for the moment.

"Oh, Fuck!" he hissed (quietly enough to avoid an admonishment).

It wasn't the color of the hands that had caused this response, but rather where those hands now rested. Molly's latest improvements to her clock had switched out some of the less-than-specific locations. _Travelling _and _Hospital_ were still the same, but the _Lost_ that taken up space between the two locations had been replaced by _Kidnapped_. There was still a _Home_ and _School_ and _Work_ for hands to point towards, but _Prison _was swapped out for _Shopping_, and _Holiday _now stood in for _Quidditch_. These changes, however, were only recognized by Harry long after the most prominent and pertinent modification was spotted. What really mattered at the moment was that his clock hand and Hermione's had finally stopped spinning…and come to a full stop over the same spot as the hands labeled "Bill," "Fleur," "Fred," and "George."

That location used to read "_Mortal Peril_."

It now read "_Fornicating."_

Harry turned back towards Ron and asked, "The clock thinks that Hermione and I are doing…_that_…right now?"

Ron let out a hearty laugh.

"Yeah, isn't it a hoot?" he shouted.

Harry considered his friend's wide smile, and shook his head.

"Well, you're taking it better than I thought," he replied loudly.

Ron shrugged. "Hey, can't help but laugh at the cocked-up clock when it thinks that you, Hermione, Bill, Fleur, Fred and George are all boffing your brains out! I mean…can you imagine?"

Harry's eyes widened into saucers.

"What?" Ron asked.

The raven-haired wizard glanced back towards the sitting room entrance, then focused his gaze onto the wall-mounted clock that actually told you the time. Harry shook his head, and told Ron, "Nothing…hey why hasn't somebody tried to silence that alarm?"

"Bill and Fleur both tried," Ginny shouted, inserting herself into the conversation. "I bet Mum's the only one who can turn it off."

Harry glanced towards the floo connection, then wished that he hadn't (since Molly was still on her hands and knees with her bum in the air).

"So what's your mum doing right now?"

"Trying to confirm that my twin brothers aren't…awww….wish I hadn't just imagined the two of them that way."

"Well why don't we just move back into the sitting room until she shuts the damn thing off?" Harry shouted.

Ginny laughed. "And run the risk of missing what happens next? No way!"

It only took a few moments longer for Molly to pull her head out of the fire and brush the soot from the front of her robes. Bill spotted his mum's action and cancelled the "cone of silence" ward that he had erected more to keep the klaxon's blares from getting in than the content of their questioning from getting out. Arthur loudly requested that Molly turn off the alarm, so that they could (theoretically) conduct a conversation at normal speaking volume.

"I'll do that right after I send those two miscreants another howler," she declared over the din.

"Why would you want to….?"

"Because they ignored my floo call again with that obnoxious cardboard cut-out that claims they can't answer the floo right now. I can just imagine why they think that…"

"Don't have to imagine what they're doing if the clock is right," Ginny said with a laugh.

"Never mind that, young lady!" Molly shouted.

Arthur put a little more force behind his request for her to turn off the alarm before doing anything else. She reluctantly did so, after pulling the instructions from an apron pocket to ensure that she wasn't disabling more than the klaxons.

"What the hell, Mum?" Bill demanded.

"Language, William!"

"No sense of privacy, Mother!"

"Don't you backtalk to me, young man!" Molly shrieked. "I will not have my children talking like that within my house."

"You will not have any children living in your house either, with a stunt like this!" Bill hissed.

"Now, now…let's everyone take a deep breath," Arthur interjected. "Clearly, something is wrong with the clock right now…assuming that Fred and George weren't acting improperly during the floo call…"

Molly scowled. "Of course they're doing something improper!"

Arthur waved towards Harry, Hermione, Bill and Fleur.

"The same improper thing that these four are supposedly up to?" Arthur reasoned.

Molly looked down at her clock face, let out a deep sigh, then shook her head.

"Right, then something is off with the clock," said Arthur. "And any talk about how and why the clock has been modified should come second to determining whether those modifications have done more than get a few locations wrong."

"What are you proposing, Dad?" Bill tersely asked.

"I will make a quick floo trip to the Ministry and back," the Weasley patriarch declared. "If my hand correctly tracks my transit, then we'll know that the problems are most likely related to the latest changes."

Molly chewed on her lip for a moment before she agreed to the test. Arthur walked over to their floo connection, tossed a pinch of powder into the flames, and disappeared within them. Those left behind in the kitchen watched as the hand marked "Arthur" quickly shifted from _Home_ to _Travelling_.

"Well his hand seems to be in working order, at least," Molly declared.

"Maybe the clock is focusing on intent," Ginny offered. "Instead of showing where you are, it's now showing where you want to be."

Hermione shook her head. "Well that can't be right…or else Ron's hand would have shifted as well."

"Hey!" the teen-aged wizard protested.

"Just sayin'," Hermione replied.

Molly shut down this line of reasoning with a terse demand for silence, which was then provided as they watched Arthur's hand move off of _Travelling_ to _Work_, then back to _Travelling_, and finally back to _Home_ as the Weasley Patriarch emerged from the floo.

Once told that his clock hand had accurately tracked his location, he suggested that Molly strip off the new locations and restore the clock face to its previous appearance.

She shook her head, and replied, "I can't change it back."

"Why not?" asked Bill.

"Because I ordered tamper-proof lettering," she replied. "Once the letters are applied, they can't be magically removed."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Why would you order tamper-proof letters?"

Molly nodded towards Bill and Fleur and then asked, "Why do you think?"

Hermione asked, "Is it the words that are tamper-proof, or only the letters?"

"What do you mean?"

"Could you just jumble up the letters, and turn _Fornicating_ into gibberish?"

Ron snorted. "Don't be stupid…there's no _g_ or _b_ in fornicating."

Bill sighed. "She's not talking about anagrams, you dolt…she's suggesting that we mix up the letters so that they don't spell out a word."

"And once it's no longer a location, then the clock hands might just ignore it," Arthur concluded.

"Not that _Fornicating _is actually a location," added Harry.

"Too bad, for that," said Ron. "I'd fancy a visit…_d'oh_!"

Molly pulled back the hand that had just cuffed her youngest son in the head, and said, "_Travelling_ isn't a location either, and that worked well enough before." She then looked at the time-telling clock on the wall and sighed. "Five minutes…just enough time to try…back to the sitting room, the lot of you."

"Why can't I stay and finish my pudding?" Ron whined.

"Oh, take the pudding with you," Molly spat. "I need to concentrate, and you all need to work on the back-up plan."

"Would have been nice to have had a back-up plan in place to begin with," Bill muttered.

"Don't you sass me!" Molly barked.

"What are you thinking about for a back-up?" Arthur asked.

"I'm going to try to switch it to gibberish," said Molly. "But if that doesn't work…Bill mentioned anagrams just now."

"That actually makes sense!" Hermione said with a slight gasp.

Molly glared at the Muggleborn witch, but decided that time spent dressing the girl down would be better spent fixing the clock. So with another wave of the hand she dismissed everyone with a tight-lipped reminder that there were quills and spare parchment in the sitting room chest.

"What's an anagram?" Ron asked, as they exited the kitchen.

"Rearranging letters in one word or group of words to form a different word or word grouping," Hermione explained. "Remember _I am Lord Voldemort_?"

Ginny shuddered, remembering far too well the description of what had taken place down in the Chamber while she lay dying and unconscious.

As they entered the sitting room, Hermione gave her quasi-secret boyfriend an odd look as he rushed to pull the curtains shut over the front windows.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Erm…don't need any distractions," Harry muttered.

"I agree," said Bill. "Also think that it's best that we work independently," he added, as he distributed quills and parchment, then set two ink pots down on the coffee table for shared use.

"Oh, alright," Ron muttered, as he sat down on the couch and set his tart down on the coffee table next to his piece of spare parchment. After dipping his quill tip into the ink pot, the red-haired wizard looked down at the blank page and then asked, "So how do you spell _fornicating_ again?"

The chance to poke fun at her brother brought Ginny's mind back from the Chamber of Secrets.

"I-N Y-O-U-R D-R-E-A-M-S…."

"Oh, good one," Ron snapped, as he leaned over and stole a glance at the top of Hermione's parchment page and asked about how anagrams worked as he copied her spelling. The Muggbleborn took a few precious seconds to explain her favorite strategies for creating anagrams. The time spent teaching was time not available for solving…which made her very unhappy when Molly summoned everyone back to the kitchen with a despondent yell.

"The letters won't stay where I put them!" the Weasley matron complained. "Get back in here!"

Bill shook his head as he glanced down at his failed attempts. "Damn…I've got nothing."

"Me neither," said Fleur.

"Anyone?" Arthur asked.

Ron giggled. "Yup, I've got one."

"Really?" Ginny asked skeptically. "Let me see it."

"Nope," said Ron with a wide smile.

"Anyone else?" Arthur asked.

"I've got one that might work," Hermione admitted.

"Right, then…you two come with me," Arthur ordered. He then turned to the others and said, "You lot keep working on a solution."

"Fair enough," said Bill, as he stood and stretched his legs.

A breath caught in Harry's throat when the older wizard walked towards one of the windows.

"Hey, thought you agreed with me!" Harry said sharply.

"What?" asked Bill.

"You agreed about the need to avoid distractions," said Harry. "Need to stay focused…you and Fleur are just _muddling_ around."

Fleur let out a sigh. "Just the two of us?" she asked. "Seems to me that you and Ginny are also muddling."

Harry winced. "No, Fleur…Ginny and I are definitely _not_ muddling around right now. You and Bill are the ones that are _muddling_….and taking a lot of _latitude_..."

The French witch smiled, and intentionally retrieved her accent as she asked, "Latitude? Eeez zhat what you kids are calling eet zhese days?"

"Exactly!" Harry hissed.

"I don't get it," said Bill.

"Gah!" Harry gasped. Shaking his head in frustration, he quickly wrote something on his parchment then held it out for Bill's review.

Ginny couldn't help leaning forward to see what Harry had written.

"P-A-R-A-D-O-X?" she asked. "That's silly, Harry…there's no X or P in fornication."

Fleur's eyes went wide in response to a realization.

"Outside?" she whispered to Harry. "On zee front lawn?"

Harry nodded.

"Menage a quatre?" Fleur asked.

The teen-aged wizard choked on some spittle as he shook his head no…he couldn't understand French, but a similar phrase had been bandied about his dormitory enough times for him to figure out what she was asking. Fleur reached over and patted Harry on the back, which allowed him to whisper something in her ear.

"Merde!" she hissed.

"I still don't get it," Bill noted.

Fleur walked over to her fiancé and pulled him away from the curtained window. It was his turn to choke on spittle once she whispered something into his ear.

The curse-breaker glanced back at the window…then towards the kitchen and the sound of his mother castigating his brother….and then back to Harry. When the messy-haired teen nodded and shrugged his shoulders, Bill let out a lough, sharp laugh, then asked, "But that also means that….?"

"More than two must be muddling, n'est pas?" Fleur quipped.

"What are you three on about?" Ginny demanded.

"Oh, nothing…nothing at all," Bill replied. He then returned his attention to Harry and let out a snort.

"What's the worry about, you sly dog?" he asked. "Looks like you're getting ready to lose your lunch rather than lose your…."

"Hush, Bill!" Fleur interjected. "I am sure that Harry is just concerned over the clock working properly."

"Worried about more than just the clock working properly, but…yeah," agreed Harry.

"Oh, Buck up!" said Bill. "Things obviously are going to work out, right?"

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with thumb and forefinger.

"Nineteen minutes," he muttered.

"What?" Bill asked.

Harry opened his eyes and repeated himself. "Nineteen minutes…I pretty sure that's the time from when the first alarm was sounded to when your mum opened the clock face back up."

Fleur giggled. "Ca baigne! Un etalon viril!"

Harry shook his head. "Not unless that translates into _'What a normal teen-aged boy!'_."

Bill furrowed his eyebrows. "Why would you think that…oh, I get it now."

"There's no way," Harry said despondently.

"Apparently there will be, because there was," Bill noted.

"Yeah, well…if you've got any suggestions….or potions…."

The older wizard snorted. "Sorry, never really have had the need."

"Is somebody going to explain what you three are talking about?" Ginny whined.

Bill glanced over at his little sister, and then shook his head.

"Maybe in a few years," he replied.

Ginny growled. "Are you going to make me practice my bat-bogey hex?"

Bill rolled his eyes. "Are you going to risk the wrath of Mum with under-aged magic use?"

"Let's see what's going on in there," Fleur decided. "It is too quiet all of a sudden."

Harry watched the French witch grab her fiance's hand and drag him towards the kitchen.

"An excellent idea," he decided, following Fleur's lead.

Ginny stood still for a moment, hoping that Harry would also follow the French witch's lead by grabbing _her_ hand.

She skulked into the kitchen once that hope was dashed, and began to ask, "So what's…"

"Shush!" Arthur hissed, nodding towards Ginny's mum.

The kitchen's new arrivals jockeyed for clear sightlines as they huddled around the kitchen table. Molly had just coaxed the last rearranged letter into place, and had set down her wand so that she could carefully replace the clock face using both hands. Once that was in place, it only took a moment to secure the face by hitting the hand-set brass screws with a "_Righty Tighty_" spell.

Molly would have then held her breath, had that breath not been needed to voice the spell that reactivated the clock.

The clock hands (which Molly had all moved over "_Home_") returned to their former positions (or returned to their rotational path, in the case of Harry's and Hermione's clock hands).

Arthur let out a deep breath and said, "Well that's settled, then,"

Harry tried not to wince in response to this assessment.

"Where's _At Cogfir Inn_?" asked Ginny.

Bill chuckled as he drew his wand and cast a _Point Me_ spell.

"Some place to the South, apparently," Bill noted.

"I still like my idea better," Ron muttered.

Molly looked up from the clock and cuffed her youngest son on the back of his head.

"Ow!"

"For you to even think that it was an acceptable suggestion!" she chided.

"What was it?" asked Ginny.

"_Coin farting_," Hermione said with a snicker.

"It would have worked," Ron insisted.

"Can't see how," offered Bill. "Coins are solid, and they call it _passing gas_ for a reason."

"That's enough," Arthur declared.

Harry nodded in agreement as he looked up at the wall-mounted timepiece and said, "Well…would you look at the _time_!"

Molly glanced up at the clock and nodded. "Got it working with just a few seconds to spare." She then stood back from the table, and said, "So go and make yourselves useful, then…I've got a howler to send."

Arthur gave his wife an odd look. "But I thought we determined that Fred and George weren't up to something?"

"Not to them," Molly spat. "To the magical clock maker who guaranteed that the new locations that I requested and paid for would work! I want my money back!"

"Oh, well…perhaps it would be better to save the howler for a follow-up if the first request doesn't work?"

Molly's lips thinned and her eyes narrowed as she glanced up towards the cupboard where she stored her "special stationary".

"I suppose you're right," she decided. "Merlin knows I need to keep a good supply on hand, so long as the Twins are living above their shop."

"There you go," Arthur agreed, as he tried to calm his wife's heart rate by rubbing her back.

Hermione's heart rate quickly raced in the opposite direction just as soon as Fleur pulled the Muggleborn back from the table and unobtrusively whispered a few words into her ear. The bushy-haired witch's eyes darted towards Harry; she blushed when he met her gaze and pressed a finger against the necklace charm that lay hidden beneath his summer-weight robe.

Molly's insistence that a letter be written straight-away to the clockmaker gave Harry the excuse that was needed...after offering Hedwig's services to her, he noted that his familiar wasn't around at the moment, and said that he'd go outside to look for her. The distracted Weasley matriarch agreed, and ordered everyone (save for her husband) out to hunt for Harry's owl.

It took Fleur only a few moments to sneak up on Ron while he was standing alone within the orchard and distract him with the release of her allure. Two minutes later, Ginny was similarly distracted. This was fortunately done out of sight of the others, which saved them from witnessing the auto-erotic reaction to Fleur's sneak attacks.

The blanket divide was already in place by the time that the French witch slipped into the shed.

"I cannot believe your mother!" she loudly announced.

"Shush!" Bill replied, before drawing his wand and casting some privacy spells. Once in place, he turned to Fleur and said, "You know that I feel the same way."

Hermione snorted. "Clearly we all do…and did…at least strongly enough to decide what we will all need to have done."

"What we will need to have done?" Harry asked.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Call it the future past perfect verb tense."

"How far back do we need to go?" Fleur asked, as Harry pulled the time turner out from beneath his robes.

"Two hours, at least," the raven-haired wizard replied. "Hedwig needs enough time to deliver the message."

"What message?" asked Hermione.

"The one that tells Fred and George that they will also need to have been shagging their girlfriends forty-five minutes ago," Harry quipped.

"Are you really sure that they need a prompt?" his girlfriend asked.

Harry shook his head as stretched out the silver chain over the other's heads. As he did, Bill said, "We would still need that hour to discuss our reaction to this mess."

"What's there to talk about?" Harry asked. "We all know what needs to be done…or what we had to do…or whatever…"

"Not that part," Bill replied. "I mean how we react tonight, at one second past midnight."

"Oh…well, better go the full three hours, then," Harry decided. "I still need time to figure out how the hell I'm going to last that long."

"How long is it?" asked Hermione.

Fleur giggled. "I thought that you've already determined that, ma Cherie?"

"Not that!"

"Nineteen minutes, at least," Harry stated.

Hermione's eyes went wide as she reflexively squeezed her thighs together and whispered, "Fuck!"

"Exactly," said Bill. "Sorry Harry, but we can only go back two…Fleur and I were still in France three hours ago."

"Two hours it is, then," said the boy who was convinced that he was about to have already lost his virginity.

**oo00OO00oo**

As Fleur cast the _Tempus_ charm that confirmed that the two couples had indeed gone back two hours in time, Harry turned towards Hermione (who was resetting the hour hand on her wristwatch) and whispered, "Did you just say _'Relax, Loverboy'_?"

"Nope," Hermione replied. "Guess you heard future me a few hours from now."

"You see?" asked Fleur, as she reached out and gave Harry's arm a squeeze. "I told you that you would rise to the occasion!"

"When did you figure out what was happening?" Hermione asked the other witch.

"When Harry told me."

"And when was that?"

"After you and Ronald brought your anagrams into the kitchen," said Fleur.

Hermione then turned towards Harry. "And you didn't think that I needed to know what was going on?"

"There wasn't a chance…everything was going so fast…"

"Nineteen minutes is not so fast, you think?" Fleur teased.

"So what tipped you off?" Hermione asked Harry.

He shrugged. "I wish that I could claim that I had brilliant powers of deductive reasoning."

"Okay, so?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Well, didn't take much for me to put one and one together after I looked out the window and spotted Fleur and Bill shagging on the front lawn, not ten seconds after they left the sitting room for the kitchen."

"We can deconstruct who knew what and who was doing what later," said Bill. He tapped his wand tip against one of his expandable buttons, pulled out Biros and parchment that he handed out to the other three.

"You each need to write letters," he declared. "Harry…yours goes to the twins, informing them that they need to be fornicating from 7:15 until…let's say 7:45."

"Thought we only needed nineteen minutes of fornication?" Hermione asked.

"Margin of safety," Bill said with a shrug.

"Think that they're up to the task?" Fleur asked.

"They're Weasley men," Bill replied. "No need to say more."

"Would you have the same confidence if we were talking about Ron?" asked Harry.

"No comment," said Bill. He then turned to Fleur and said, "Write a quick note to your sister…we'll have Hedwig deliver that one last."

"Okay," said Fleur.

"What's my letter for?" Hermione asked.

"It's for your parents," Bill replied. "You did agree on the authenticating sentence over the weekend, right?"

When Hermione nodded, the curse-breaker began to dictate.

"Use that sentence, then tell them that they need to get in their car as soon they receive the letter. They're to drive west on the M3 highway, and then north on the A30 to a place called Blackbushe Airport…it is roughly twenty miles from their house."

Hermione nodded. "Blackbushe…got it. They're to go there straight away, or do they have time to pack?"

Bill shook his head. "No need to pack…Gringott's will make arrangements once they're away…don't want anyone who might be watching the house to think that anything is out of the ordinary."

"Makes sense," said Hermione. "So once they arrive…?"

"There is a restaurant next to the tower," Bill replied. "They should park, go inside the restaurant, and tell the host or hostess that they are there to meet with Nigel Nilbog."

Harry looked up from the letter that he was writing to the Twins.

"Who's Nigel Nilbog?"

Hermione giggled. "Nilbog is goblin spelled backwards, Harry."

"Oh, right."

Hermione finished writing out that sentence then asked, "And then?"

"And then they'll be off," said Bill. "With luck and no large delays, they'll be up in the air before we turn back time." He thought for a moment, before adding, "It would be easier if they take their passports with them, but arrangements can be made if they forget."

"Got it," Hermione declared. "Anything else?"

"No, that's about it."

"So where are they going?"

Bill smiled. "I guess that we're close enough to our own departure to stop worrying about need to know?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, that's alright. If you tell us now, then with Harry's luck it would guarantee Dumbledore dropping by tonight for a spot of tea."

"Oi!" Harry complained.

"Alright, then with our shared luck," Hermione replied, as she leaned towards Harry and kissed his cheek.

"That's better," he declared.

The three letter writers finished their respective correspondences soon after this declaration. Hedwig flew into the opened window barely five seconds after Harry had opened it, and took her instructions…she was to deliver Fred and George's letter first, then the Granger's letter, and then fly on to France to deliver Fleur's letter to her sister. Nobody would think it strange if Harry's familiar spent time resting at the Delacour's after such a long flight.

With Hedwig safely gone, Bill closed the shed window, turned back towards the other three, and began to explain what would happen next. Not what would have to happen within the hour…but, rather, what would happen that evening. The review of these plans took over an hour, which was both good and bad from Harry's perspective…good since it kept his mind occupied, and tamped down on his nerves, but bad in that it kept him from figuring out just how he was supposed to fornicate for nineteen straight minutes, given the fact that he had barely lasted three or four minutes the two times that Hermione had offered a helping hand.

This made the situation seem all the more desperate when Bill cast a _Tempus_ charm and glibly announced that it would soon be time to start fornicating.

Fleur glanced around the cluttered shed and shook her head.

"This…it will not do for such a special moment, no?" she asked.

While the French witch set her mind to temporarily transforming Arthur's shed into something that looked more like a bridal suite, Bill pulled Harry aside and asked, "So…do you need protection?"

"I have already taken care of that for them!" Fleur called out from the other side of the room.

"Really?" Harry squeaked, as he glanced towards his blushing girlfriend.

"Well…it is always better to be prepared," she sputtered. "Not that I was planning on something like this…I mean, I kind of was, but not exactly like this…"

Harry gasped, and repeated himself. "Really?"

Hermione chewed on her lower lip as she walked up to Harry, took his hand, and asked, "Well, tomorrow is your birthday…right?"

Her boyfriend let out a deep sigh of disbelief.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted our first time to be special…and the only way that I can think that I'll be able to last nineteen minutes is to distract myself."

"Distract yourself how?"

Harry winced. "Well, the surest way that I'm able to manage embarrassing erections is to think about something decidedly unsexy…like Ron's dirty socks, or Umbridge..."

"Ewwwwww!"

"You see what I mean, then?" Harry asked.

Hermione nodded. "Well, you know Harry…this weekend when I was with my mum, I kind of asked her how a couple could make their special moments last longer than a few moments…"

"You talked about _that_ with your Mum?" Harry hissed.

His girlfriend's eyes narrowed.

"Would you rather I had asked my father?" she replied. "Honestly, Harry…I was just trying to help…and you're the one worrying about the nineteen minutes…and she is a medical professional…."

"She's a _dentist_, Hermione!"

Bill decided that now was a good time to see if Fleur needed help with the temporary redecorating, and excused himself from the rest of the conversation. This saved him from learning about the "squeeze technique," and from considering a situation in which he would need to pinch the end of his todger for nineteen long minutes just to delay an orgasm. The way that Harry crossed his legs and howled in protest reinforced his decision to give the couple some privacy…at least until it was time to act. He walked towards Harry and Hermione and asked, "Right…seven minutes to go…time for Fleur and me to give you two lovebirds some privacy."

Hermione looked around the shed and smiled. While the area on the near side of the hanging blanket (the side closest to the door) was unchanged, the magically expanded far side of the blanket had been completely transformed. Cluttered bits and pieces of Muggle stuff had been transfigured into lit candles and rose petals, while a work bench had been turned into a comfortable quilt-covered bed.

"Thank you, Fleur…you didn't have to."

The French witch looked her arm through her fiancee's and asked, "It was the least we could do…for you two are helping us to have defeated Molly's clock, no?"

Harry shook his head at the use of the future past perfect verb tense as Bill shook his hand, Fleur kissed his cheek, and they both wished the younger couple well.

Bill casting yet another _Tempus_ charm, and re-confirmed that Hermione's wristwatch was synchronized.

"Hey, Fleur?" Harry asked, as Bill and his fiancée headed for the shed's door.

"Yes?"

"Don't forget to wave when you spot me staring out the window."

The French witch smiled. "I will be sure to remember."

The older couple then left, exchanging whispers about who would need to be on top and who would need to be facing the front windows of the house in order to make the future past work out.

Hermione giggled as she watched Bill and Fleur walk towards the front of the Burrow from one of the shed's windows.

"I still find it hard to believe that they're going to be shagging on the front lawn in broad daylight and nobody is going to spot them."

"Except for me," said Harry. "And probably the invisible goblin guards that we're not supposed to know about."

"That's true," Hermione replied. She stepped away from the window and pulled Harry into a hug.

"It's going to be okay," she insisted. "We already know that things worked out, right?"

"But I wanted this to be more than okay!"

"It will be, because it will be with you," Hermione replied. She thought for a moment, then shook her head, glanced at her watch, and gave Harry's bum a firm squeeze. "Ugh…enough with the bodice-ripper dialogue…six minutes to go…so let's get naked!"

There was still a bit of disbelief within Harry's eyes as he stepped back and followed his girlfriend's lead. Once down to just his boxers, he cast a _Tempus_ spell to confirm the accuracy of Hermione's wristwatch.

"Five and a half minutes, right Hermio….._ne_?"

The Muggleborn witch was bending down to retrieve the knickers that she'd just stepped out of. She froze when she heard Harry's voice break, imagining the from-behind bare-arsed view that she was now providing him. Taking in a breath to help steel her nerves, she casually stood up straight, turned towards her future past lover, and glanced at her watch (which was now the only thing that she was wearing).

"Five minutes, fifteen seconds by my watch…Harry?"

"Erm…Merlin. Sorry for staring at you like a fool, but you're so beautiful!"

"And you're so handsome…and hard," Hermione quipped.

"How could I not be?"

Hermione took a few steps forward and reached for the waistband of Harry's boxer shorts. "Need some help guiding this tent off of its pole?"

Her boyfriend shook his head. "Better pace myself, or it'll be over before it starts!"

"Relax, Harry…we don't have to rush straight into this, do we?" Hermione asked, as she ignored his suggestion and stretched out the elastic of his waistband.

"That was my question, actually."

"What was?" Hermione asked, as she dropped to her knees and carefully guided his boxers down towards the floor.

"What is the exact definition of fornication?" Harry asked. "I mean…I know what it is, but do we have to be going full-out the whole time, or can we ease into it a bit? You know…maybe some foreplay before we…you know?"

Hermione thought about this question as she regained her footing, glanced at her watch, and dragged a single finger down Harry's chest.

"Well…the exact definition is something like sexual intercourse between partners who aren't married," she stated.

"So we wouldn't be fornicating if, say, we stuck to…let's say…just using our tongues?"

Hermione nodded. "Sexual intercourse, strictly speaking, is defined as vaginal penetration by a penis. That's how unmarried witches can still fool around while still maintaining their virginity."

Harry shook his head as he pulled his girlfriend into an embrace, and kissed the side of her head. "I doubt that's how Molly would define it."

"I hear you," Hermione replied, as she rested her chin on Harry's bare shoulder. "The way she throws the term _Scarlet Woman_ around….."

The naked witch suddenly broke the embrace by leaning back and shouting, "Holy Shit, Harry…you're brilliant!"

"What?" he asked. "I am?"

"Absolutely!" Hermione declared, as she grabbed her boyfriend's hand and dragged him over to the transfigured bed.

"Hoisted on her own petard!" she declared, as she pushed Harry down onto the bed and climbed on top of him.

The raven-haired teen looked up at the girl who was now straddling his thighs and groaned.

"Hermione…I'd rather not think about Molly hoisting herself on anything with you sitting on me like this."

"Oh, right. Sorry," Hermione replied, making yet another time check. "T-minus three minutes Harry…what I meant was that on the one hand you might think that Molly will be beaten by her own Puritanical sense of insanity."

"She will?"

"Yes, Harry…think for a minute…"

"Don't have much more time than a minute."

"Two minutes forty-five, actually. Just think about how far we've already gone, Harry. Hell, look at what the two of us are doing right now….do you think that Molly would consider this to be fornication?"

"Erm….yes," Harry stammered, trying to focus more on Hermione's logic and less on her lovely breasts.

"But it isn't fornication, is it? Because right now your bits are only pressing against my bits, instead of penetrating them."

Harry, who was now beginning to follow the logic, reached up and began to fondle both of Hermione's breasts. He then asked, "And this wouldn't be fornicating either, would it?"

Hermione looked down at Harry's hands and rolled her eyes. "No, playing with my girls is not the same as vaginal penetration, so it isn't fornication." She then reached down and grabbed Harry's erection. "Neither is this, by the way."

"Careful!" Harry hissed, finding Hermione's grip far too pleasurable for their own good.

"Oh…alright," she sighed, as she dropped her grip and dropped down to the bed so that she could stretch out against Harry's side. Leaning into his embrace, she said, "By this logic you could be buggering my arse in…two minutes and ten seconds…and Molly's clock wouldn't care…because by definition, it's not fornication."

Harry squeezed Hermione's shoulder and playfully asked, "I could, huh?"

"Could what?"

"Could be buggering your arse two minutes from now?"

"Please, Harry…I'm trying to think out loud."

"And I'm just thinking about what you're saying out loud!"

"Well stop thinking about buggering my arse right now and consider the other hand."

"What's this other hand going to do while we're buggering?"

"Harry!" Hermione protested, as she nudged her knee against his leg. "On the other hand…magic is largely about intent, isn't it?"

Harry let out a breath and nodded his head. "It is, but Hermione…you have less than two minutes to work this out…."

"So stop interrupting me!" Hermione said. "Magic is mostly about intent, and it was Molly who expressed her intentions to the clockmaker, and Molly who placed the letters on the clock face, and Molly who said the spells that activated the clock's magic, so by that measure…"

"If it's Molly's clock, it follows Molly's logic?" Harry asked.

"Exactly."

"So buggering would be considered fornication."

Hermione snorted. "Harry…like I said…using Molly's logic we're fornicating right now."

Harry thought for a moment.

"So your one hand is saying that only my erect penis inside your vagina will make the clock think that we're fornicating," he reasoned. "While your other hand is saying that we could spend nineteen minutes doing nothing more than what we're doing now and the clock is going to raise the alarm?"

"That's about it."

"So how do we figure out which hand is right?"

Hermione shook her head. "Well, on the one hand…"

"Enough with the hands, please?"

"Okay, okay…have you figured out how you're going to delay ejaculation for nineteen minutes while your penis is in my vagina?"

"Not unless I'm thinking nasty distractions, or pinching myself every ten seconds…"

"So that's an argument in favor of Molly's logic," Hermione reasoned. "And there's always the knowledge of future's past."

"Verb tenses, again?"

"No…I mean…we know that a minute from now that the clock will place our hands over fornication. We _know_ that has already happened, even though in one sense it hasn't happened yet. So whatever we're doing in the next minute has to be considered fornication…at least according to Molly's clock. No way around it."

"Oh," said Harry. "Are you sure?"

Hermione let out a sigh. She once again looked at her watch and said, "Yes…now that I've thought it out…I'm sure."

"Okay, then," said Harry. "So that means that we don't have to have sex right now."

"Not if having sex means sexual intercourse."

"So what _do_ you want to do now?"

Hermione thought for a moment, then lifted herself up until she was squatting by Harry's side.

"Well…even if we think that we could do nothing and still trip the clock's alarm…no need to risk such a conservative hypothesis."

"No need?"

"No…I'd rather we test the limits of our shared sexual development, rather than test the limits of Molly's Puritanism."

"What does that mean?"

Hermione responded by standing up on the transfigured bed. She then stepped one foot over Harry's chest and squatted down, holding her crotch only a few inches above his face. Holding her wristwatch out in front of _her_ face, she watched the second hand's motion as she asked, "Think that your tongue can last nineteen minutes, mister?"

"Really?"

"Hey, you were the one suggesting that oral sex would count."

Harry chuckled. "I was, wasn't I?...Well, if you think it's the right thing to do…mmmph!"

"Sorry to interrupt, Love…but it's fornicating time."

To prove her point, Hermione twisted her wrist so that she could show Harry her watch.

The nod that he gave in response added to the stimulation as she pressed against his face.

The soundness of Hermione's logic was confirmed a minute later, when they both heard the faint cry of Molly's clock as it raised the "Scarlet Alert" from inside the Burrow.

**oo00OO00oo**

**AN's:** 1) I know that I have an annoying habit of inserting bits of Monty Python into nearly every single one of by stories, but this time it was absolutely unintentionally organic…I was using the street view option on Google Earth to check out whether there was on-street parking for the section of Charing Cross where I've imagined the Leaky Cauldron to be located, and just down the street was the theatre marquee for _Spamalot! _in all of its glory. Let us just assume that the story takes place during the show's West End run (and within the time period that Google was driving by with its cameras).

2) I had every intention of not posting this chapter until it included the Escape from Molly's Meddling. But once the chapter got to 14,000 words…and as I began to think about what the next 3,000 or 4,000 words would say…just couldn't do it. I hope that those readers who are fed up with Molly (as well as me) are at least placated by knowing that plans have been set in motion, and that the end of their stay (and Molly's control) is but a few hours away (in story time, at least).


	12. Chapter 12: On the Fly

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: ** This update is 18k words long, and I've probably written out and subsequently discarded just as many words as the chapter took shape. There's a reason why the draft that went to press had a file name marked "version 15.0." It's also only seen my eyes, and there's bound to be a few typos and loose plot threads. But this update is dying to be released, so out it goes.

Thanks to Tribernator for providing the best review ever for the last chapter. I couldn't resist adapting his rant for inclusion in this update, knowing that it reflected the opinions of many of my readers.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 12: On the Fly**

_10:30pm, Tuesday, 30 July  
The Burrow_

A deep sigh escaped from Hermione's lips as she pulled her ear away from the inside of the bedroom door.

"All clear?" Fleur asked.

"I think so."

"So, why don't we get packing?"

Hermione shook her head. "We should wait. There might be bed checks before midnight."

Fleur muttered. "Are you certain that we can't force sleep potions down their throats?"

Her roommate sighed. "And what would happen if there was an attack after we left? How would Molly and Arthur be able to defend themselves, or Ron and Ginny? Best we stick to the _Somnus_ spell."

"Yes, yes we mustn't discount the possibility, however remote," Fleur said with a sigh. She smiled, and decided, "Then let us pretend to make ready for bed, and I will comb out your hair."

The two witches stripped off their Molly-approved summer weight robes and Molly-approved undergarments and tossed them into the clothes hamper. They then each slipped on colorful yukata-style robes that Molly definitely would _not_ have approved of…the silk fabric was thin enough to define areolar perimeters, and the hemlines were short enough to prove the absence of knickers whenever they bent over.

Hermione dragged a chair in front of the full-length mirror, took a seat, and closed her eyes. Fleur noticed the pensive look on her roommate's face and asked if something was wrong. Hermione cocked her head as if she was listening to something, then shook her head and replied, "Crookshanks is with Harry, broadcasting a wild mix of emotions… anxiousness and excitement, some lust…mostly anger, though, coming from the both of them."

"Anger?" Fleur asked. "What is Harry angry about?"

"It's hard to put the emotions into words," Hermione admitted.

"Give it a try?"

Hermione glanced back over her shoulder towards the bedroom door. The corner of lips curled into a smile as Fleur pushed her head back into place so that she could continue her combing.

"Honestly," Hermione growled (in a tone of voice that vaguely resembled her boyfriend's). "That fucking bitch needs to be pulled back into fucking reality by her husband already. How old are Bill and Charlie again? It is none of her goddamn business what her full grown adult sons are doing…especially in the privacy of their own homes!"

"I agree!" Fleur giggled.

"And the fact that the psychobitch is actually intending to make her clock changes permanent so that she can keep track of not just her children's love lives, but ours, as if it was her God given right? Holy shit, I just want to punch her!"

"Me too!" Fleur agreed.

"And on the way out, we ought to blow that fucking clock to tiny shreds and use _Fiendfire_ on the remains to make sure it can't be fixed, that harpy needs to learn to keep her fat nose out of the personal lives of everyone around her!"

"That would be a memorable exit," Fleur noted.

"So here is another idea…add yet another alarm setting to the clock. We'll call it _Being A Nosy Bitch_. Molly's hand wouldn't budge from there, and the fact that she won't ever be able to hear herself think again should teach her a lesson or two!"

The burst of laughter that pushed up from Fleur's belly was so intense that she had to abandon the comb mid-stroke and clutch her sides.

Hermione's shushing was ignored.

"Incredible!" the part-Veela finally said. "I thought you said it was difficult to put Harry's emotions into words?"

A sheepish grin grew on Hermione's face.

"Well…," she admitted. "I might have been a little…creative…in giving voice to his anger."

Fleur grinned. "A little?"

Hermione just smiled.

"So what is Monsieur Crookshanks so unhappy about?" Fleur asked. "He does not yet have a clock hand of his own, no?"

"Don't give Little Miss Nosy Bitchany ideas!"

"Sorry."

"That's okay," said Hermione. "Crooks would just as soon stay here in Devon with his harem of barnyard felines."

"Ah, that makes sense," said Fleur. "But he should not worry… I am certain that there will be French cats just as eager to join his harem. In fact, if we make it there, I will make the arrangements myself!"

"Careful, he might hold you to that promise," said Hermione.

Fleur shrugged as she pulled the comb away from her roommate's slightly tamer hair and touched her shoulder.

"Well, it certainly was an eventful day, no?" she asked. "Did you enjoy your stay at the Cogfir Inn?"

The Muggleborn rolled her eyes.

"We did not stay at the Cogfir Inn."

"Why do you wish to deny this, Hermione?" Fleur asked. "Molly's clock…it did not lie, no?"

"Not according to Molly's logic…we decided that we could have been snogging dressed in anoraks and she'd still have insisted that we were fornicating."

"I see," Fleur replied. "Very ingenious. And perceptive. And yet…very disappointing."

A chuckle escaped from Hermione's lips.

"Actually…it was still brilliant."

"So it was more than kissing in anoraks, then?"

"Oh, yes." Hermione purred.

"How far did you two go?"

"Let's just say that we….well, we enjoyed the Inn's tea service."

Fleur giggled. "Really?" she asked. "How much milk did Harry add to your tea?"

"Hush!"

"And did your lover play with your luscious teacakes?"

"I'm so not going there!"

"Why not?" Fleur asked. "You do not wish to compare notes, and hear how my breasts became grass-stained on the front lawn?"

"Nope."

"What a shame," Fleur pouted. "So at least tell me…the room at the Cogfir Inn…it is booked, no?"

Hermione's blush was more than enough response.

"I will take that as a yes," Fleur replied brightly. "And did Harry make a deposit on this room reservation? Or was his deposit made on something…or someone…else?"

Hermione pulled her head away from Fleur's comb and stood.

"Enough of this," she decided. Hermione then slipped off her thin robe and slipped naked under her covers.

"Nude?" Fleur asked.

"It's just another night at the Burrow, right?" Hermione asked. "Haven't worn that itchy monstrosity of a nightgown before, not going to start now."

"Bon!" Fleur declared, as she stripped down and crawled naked under her own set of covers. She dimmed the lights, rested her head against her pillow, and said, "Sweet dreams of cake-sharing and taking tea with loads of milk, ma Cherie!"

Hermione threw a pillow towards her roommate and hissed, "Hush, you!"

After a few minutes of silence, Hermione wished that her French roommate hadn't honored this request.

"Fleur?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

"You don't have to stop teasing me, you know."

"You don't mind?"

"It kept me distracted, at least."

"Distracted from what?"

"From worrying about my parents."

Fleur sighed. "They will be fine, Hermione. Perhaps Bill will bring back word of their safe arrival."

The younger witch drew her wand and cast a Tempus charm. "He won't leave for another forty-five minutes, though."

Fleur pulled back her covers, swung her legs off the side of the bed, and reached for her dressing gown.

"Come, then," she said. "Let us busy ourselves with another check for tracking charms."

Hermione slipped out of her own bed and retrieved her own scandalously-short dressing gown. "That will keep your mind busy, at least," she declared. "I'll just be watching you cast the detection spells."

"Then I will continue to tease you about cakes and milk," Fleur decided. "Unless you would rather think about new ways of expressing your anger towards Molly and her clock?"

"Something more than punching Little Miss Nosy Bitch in her big fat nose?"

"I thought that was Harry's idea," Fleur said coyly. "I am certain that you could be much more creative."

An evil grin formed on Hermione's face as she helped her roommate spread their possessions out for the check.

"Oh, I might be able to think of a thing or two," she declared.

Hermione was beginning to work out the logistics of magically shoving Molly's clock up her arse when a more pressing issue popped into mind.

"Fleur!" she hissed. "We didn't talk about checking Harry for tracking charms!"

"Perhaps Bill will have thought of that, and is checking him now?"

"But what if he isn't?"

The older witch pouted. "Bill could do it after he makes contact with our lip-reading friends, no?"

Hermione asked, "That would take time…why don't you check Harry while Bill is meeting with the goblins?"

Fleur arched an eyebrow as she used the tip of her wand to lift a pair of Hermione's knickers off of the bed.

"You know that I would have to check all of his things, right?"

The Muggleborn shrugged. "You've already seen him modeling his mail-order selections."

Fleur let the knickers fall back to the bedspread and dragged the tip of her wand down the front of Hermione's dressing gown.

"And it would have to be an intimate inspection, no?" she asked.

Hermione blushed as she considered just how intimate the inspection would have to be. The two witches then spent a few minutes resolving these concerns.

**oo00OO00oo**

Much closer to midnight, Bill pulled his arm free of his bed linens, aimed his wand across his own temporary sleeping quarters, and cast a charm that sent his brother into an even deeper sleep. Nervous anticipation catalyzed his rate of preparation; it took barely more than a minute for him to dress himself in travelling clothes and concealment magic. The curse-breaker then slipped out into the hallway, and tip-toed towards the stairs that led to the upper level.

A whispered detection spell confirmed that his sister's bedroom still didn't have the kind of ward line that kept boys (and men, and male part-kneazles) out of Fleur and Hermione's room. The analysis of his mother's motivations having already been hashed out, Bill didn't dwell on this fact (or the fact that Ginny's door was unlocked, for that matter). He stepped just far enough into his sister's bedroom to get a clear shot towards the bed, and cast the same _Somnus _spell that had sent his brother into a deep sleep.

It was just as easy for the curse-breaker to gain entrance to the adjacent bedroom. A bit harder, though, to keep from reacting once he was inside. Bill's parents were in separate twin beds; his mum was closer to the door, and facing it as she slept on her side. It wasn't the fact that she was hugging her clock against her chest that surprised Bill…it was the fact that there didn't appear to be anything in between flesh and glass. Molly's bed linens were gathered down by her hips, revealing the top half of her very low-cut nightgown. A shoulder strap had either slipped off in her sleep or been pushed down prior to that, exposing her entire left breast (save for that part that was thankfully concealed by the clock).

The _Somnus_ spells cast on mother and father had to wait for the bile to be forced back down into Bill's stomach.

A few seconds later, Fleur heard someone scratch a fingernail against their bedroom door. But there was no one at the threshold…at least no one that she could see.

The sound of a second fingernail scratch carried down the hall. A pajama-clad Harry Potter opened that door, stuck his head out, and tried not to react when he spotted a bare-footed Fleur wearing a loosely-tied thigh-baring dressing gown. After steadying himself, the teen-aged wizard tip-toed to the head of the stairs. From there he watched the door at the base of the stairs quietly open, and then quietly close, seemingly all on its own.

Harry looked down the hall and silently gave Fleur the "thumbs-up" signal. The French witch nodded, then stepped into the hall and closed that bedroom door behind her.

"Meow?"

The-Boy-Who-Lived glanced back over his shoulder and shushed the part-Kneazle who had been watching from the doorway.

Someone grabbed his chin and pulled his lips towards a kiss. That someone was invisible, save for a shimmer of movement as his mouth was covered by a pair of barely-visible lips. Harry went with the flow and leaned into that kiss as Fleur walked past, gathered Crookshanks into her arms, and walked into his bedroom. The pajama-wearing wizard then felt a warm breath against his left ear as his near-invisible girlfriend whispered, "I'm wearing a concealment cloak. I'll stand guard while she explains."

Harry nodded his head and followed Fleur into his room.

**oo00OO00oo**

One floor down, Bill opened the Burrow's back door and slipped into the moon-cast shadows of his childhood home. This level of stealth was more for appearances than any real concern for operational safety. The self-cast disillusionment charm (applied just before Bill had left Ron's bedroom and scratched on two bedroom doors) was draped on top of a notice-me-not charm, which was itself layered over a goblin-tailored cloak of concealment. It would have taken a _hominem revelio_ spell to spot the curse-breaker, and Bill trusted that the goblins who were (presumably) guarding and/or spying on them would have found a way to make him aware of that kind of spell being cast inside the ward perimeter.

Those very same goblins would give him hell if Bill didn't treat the situation with the level of cunning and caution that it deserved, though. So he stilled himself, and stretched his senses out into the he was more confident about his surroundings, he started down the dirt path that led from the house out towards the orchard (and the ward line just beyond the pond). He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but figured that even if he couldn't find it, that "it" would find him.

A familiarity with the location of each tree and each curve in the path (gained over his childhood and reinforced over the past several weeks) allowed Bill to make his way through the orchard without the aid of a lantern or _Lumos_. This familiarity also allowed him to spot something out of place…even in the dim moonlight that filtered down through the thick canopy of overlapping tree branches and leaves.

Bill stopped in his tracks and waited. After a few moments, he stepped off the path, headed towards one particular apple tree, then stopped and waited. When nothing happened, he wondered if he had overestimated the surveillance capabilities of his Gringott's colleagues. Then he discounted this possibility, and wondered how best to announce both his concealed presence and his discovery of a sentry's concealed presence. It was highly unlikely that a high-ranking goblin would be on the watch, which gave Bill a little leeway when it came to favoring plain-spoken challenges over more cautionary honorifics. Memories of past scatological conversations with Malice the secretary came to mind… and stayed there.

The curse-breaker briefly considered opening his trouser fly and taking a piss against the suspect tree. But then he considered how a hidden sentry might respond if he was caught under that spray of urine, and decided it would be better to stick to verbal abusiveness. So he approached the tree with his wand in hand, rather than his todger.

"Hey Arsehole!" Bill hissed, using his employer's tongue. "I'm going to cast a perimeter-based privacy ward." He waited a few tense moments, then conjured a cone of silence wide enough to include the suspect tree trunk.

"It's safe to talk now, so give it up, Shite for Brains!" Bill demanded.

A voice from within the tree trunk replied, "I'll rip open your skull and shit on your brains if you come any closer!"

Bill chuckled. "That's pretty funny…killer trees that threaten toothlessly in Gobbledygook. So now that we confirmed that your concealment skills aren't worth dick, do you have what we asked for?"

"Hold your position, Curse-breaker."

"Sure thing, Shite for Brains."

The red-haired wizard stepped back into the shadows, and waited for the goblin's next move.

**oo00OO00oo**

Checking his stuff for tracking charms had made perfect sense to Harry, once Fleur had explained the need. Harry would have bet on his glasses being charmed…they were, after all, something that he couldn't do without. The same reasoning made his wand a likely target, but both had both tested negative. Fleur then checked his boots…it wasn't the only footwear that he owned, but when the alternatives were Dudley's cast-off taped-up trainers it was the only thing he would wear on his feet. But these too, tested negative.

Hope grew with each negative response that their shared pessimism was unwarranted. Fleur tried his rucksack, then dumped it out and tested everything within the rucksack. The clothes that Harry had set out for their escape, his books, a bag of Hedwig's owl treats…everything was clean.

"Not much more," Fleur announced. She waved towards Harry and said, "Lean forward, so that I can do your head."

Harry complied with this request, swallowing a saucy comment about the part-Veela "doing" his head in his bedroom. Despite Fleur's assurances that this had been Hermione's idea, he was very mindful of the fact that a scantily-dressed part-Veela was in his bedroom, with the door closed. And it would have been impossible for Harry _not _to know that Fleur wasn't wearing anything underneath her dressing gown; repeated wand waves had loosened the front of that gown and created wardrobe malfunctions on three separate occasions.

The detection spell that Fleur was using was intent-based magic with a variable area of effect and duration. The targeted object would turn blue if the test was positive for trackers, and the more power Fleur put into the spell, the longer that glow would last. Power also drove how large an area could be checked. Fleur had played with the variables and come up with a version of the spell that she could cast repeatedly without tiring…a fist-sized area of effect that would produce a three or four second glow if anything within that targeted area was charmed with a tracking spell. This meant that it took several castings to cover all of Harry's messy mop; both were pleasantly surprised when these tests failed to generate a positive response.

"Très bien," she said with satisfaction. "Hands out, please."

Fleur quickly cleared the teen-aged wizard's fingernails. The French witch then squatted down, and innocently asked, "Has anyone told you that you have very sexy feet, Harry?"

Hermione's boyfriend looked down towards his toes, and immediately wished that he hadn't; Fleur's robe had slipped open for the fourth time. Tearing his eyes away from an unobstructed view down Fleur's front, he squeaked out the word "No."

The French witch looked up, then looked down and chuckled as she pulled robe fabric over her knees.

"Oh, Harry," she sighed. "You are such a considerate boyfriend. And Hermione is a very lucky witch."

"I really doubt she is thinking that at the moment," Harry muttered.

"Why do you say that?"

The teen-aged wizard nodded towards the part-kneazle chaperone that was glaring at them from the bed.

"Maybe because Crookshanks is still broadcasting my emotions?" he asked. "And maybe because Hermione is out there receiving those broadcasts, so she knows in real time whenever I get…"

"A pajama tent? Fleur teased. "Naughty thoughts?"

Harry sighed and said, "Exactly."

Fleur sighed. "Why do you think that Hermione's familiar even has the ability to broadcast your emotions? It is only because the bond between you two is so strong."

The messy-haired wizard quietly mulled over this point while Fleur raised another.

"And why is it that you are not affected like Ronald when I release my allure? It is because your heart belongs so completely to Hermione."

"But…it's not my heart that is broadcasting randy thoughts to Hermione every time that your robe slips open, is it?"

Fleur smiled coyly. "You know that because of the life debt that you could still claim me as your sex slave, correct?"

"Well…that's what you've said…"

"Hermione knows this as well. But she also knows that you are planning on granting my Bill a boon."

"But that doesn't excuse…"

"Doesn't excuse your arousal whenever I accidentally flash you?" Fleur asked.

"Well….yes."

Fleur shrugged. "Your dragon-sized tent is raised without ill intent."

"I doubt that either Bill or Hermione would agree."

The French witch shook her head. "Hermione said herself that a boy's brain is hard-wired to react to boobs and bits. You can't help not to notice."

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Boobs and bits? Is that an exact quote?"

Fleur giggled. "She also said something about you not being embarrassed, because studies show that the average teenage male experiences an erection every fourteen minutes…and that's without having an incredibly sexy French witch around."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, she's already told me that."

"She told you that I am an incredibly sexy witch?"

"No, the fourteen minutes part."

Fleur nodded towards the front of Harry's pajamas and waggled her eyebrows.

"Then you are above average in more ways than one, no?" she teased.

Harry didn't bother to look down…he had been fighting a losing battle against an unwanted erection ever since the first nipple slip.

Fleur reached out and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"You are human, Harry. Hermione is human. How do you respond when she becomes aroused, and your familiar broadcasts her randiness to you?"

A breath caught in Harry's throat as his gaze involuntarily darted towards his bed.

"Well…"

Fleur laughed as she cast a _Tempus_ spell that showed the time as five minutes before midnight.

"Bill should be back any time now," she stated. "We could stop now and wait for him to finish the job?"

Harry shook his head.

"No, we'd just be taking up post-midnight time that could be better spent on other things. Like escaping, and claiming lordships, and granting boons."

"Good," Fleur said. "I am happy that we had this talk."

"Great."

"Because now I must check the rest of your hairs."

"Erm….what?"

Fleur smiled. "Unless you have already taken my advice and thinned your thicket?"

Harry chuckled and shook his head. "Afraid not."

"Then please become nude," said Fleur.

"But…"

Fleur reached for her dressing gown sash. "Would it be easier if I also become nude?"

"No…it's just that…Hermione…"

"It is nothing that I haven't already seen, no?"

"You've already seen my…when?"

Deliberately side-stepping the fact that Hermione had allowed her to see Harry's modeling work in the mail-order lingerie catalog, Fleur replied, "Sur la Côte de Weasley. Do you not remember that Molly's _Praetego_ spell was too small to cover your thicket?"

"It's not the thicket that I'm worried about. It's the…"

"I could cast a freezing charm if you like."

Harry's knees locked together. "Thanks, but no thanks. After a bit of thought, he let out a deep breath and then said, "Turn around."

Fleur snickered. "You want me to blindly cast the spell over my shoulder?"

"Just do it, please."

The part-Veela complied with Harry's request.

"And now?"

Harry glanced across the room and rolled his eyes.

"And now, quit looking at me in the mirror."

Fleur pouted and replied, "Spoilsport."

Harry muttered, "More like survival skills," as he pulled a clean (and cleared) pair of boxers off of the bed. Turning away from Fleur, he quickly pushed down his pajama bottoms and pushed decidedly unsexy thoughts to the front of his brain. Once he'd regained some control, he pulled up the shorts.

"There, you can turn around now."

Fleur spun around just in time to catch the pajama bottoms that had been tossed in her direction. They were checked (and cleared) while Harry unbuttoned his pajama top. That proved to be free of charms as well.

Fleur faced Harry and coyly stated, "So, the moment of truth?"

The teen-aged wizard pointed towards his bared chest and shook his head.

"Got some chest hairs to do first," he stated.

Fleur leaned forward and squinted.

"Where?"

"Right here," Harry said indignantly. He then looked down and moved his finger a bit. "And there….and there…and here…."

Fleur laughed out loud. "I am just teasing you. I can see your manly chest hairs, Harry….all six of them."

"Hey!"

"Stand still, then," said Fleur. "Shouldn't be hard to get them all with one spell casting."

"Just do it," Harry whined.

The spell was cast, and the chest hairs proved to be free of trackers.

With eyes still closed, the teen-aged wizard closed his eyes and hooked his thumbs inside the elastic waistband of his boxer shorts. "Right, let's get this over with."

"Why aren't you looking?" Fleur asked.

"Less embarrassing," Harry reasoned. "Less nerve-wracking as well…never a good thing when you spot a witch aiming her wand towards your bits."

"As you wish," said Fleur.

Harry hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and reluctantly pushed them down.

**oo00OO00oo**

It had been really, really hard for Hermione to maintain focus during Crookshanks' latest broadcasts. Harry's emotions had been on an intense roller-coaster ride that took another lap every time he generated even a sliver of sexual arousal. It was sweet, in a way…her boyfriend's arousal, immediately squashed by waves of disgust, eventually giving way to guilt, presumably about having been aroused by something that Fleur had said, or done, or flashed.

Hermione was definitely planning on talking with her boyfriend about that misapplied guilt. A little bit of remorse was healthy, but bits and boobs and all that. As long as it didn't build to anything, and he was able to eventually gain control; the same way that her father (and mother) dealt with the occasional erection during family visits to clothing optional beaches (it was one of those events that had prompted her mother's frank explanations, after all).

The main problem, from her standpoint, was the strength of the broadcasted signal. It was a double-edged sword. Knowing your boyfriend's emotional state was a thrilling way to quash any self-doubts about your physical desirability. But there were times, such as that very moment, when the broadcasts were interfering with her ability to focus on other tasks. And that was a problem when the tasks at hand were so critical…tasks like keeping watch while your gorgeous roommate was in your boyfriend's bedroom, checking out his bits.

Hermione shook her head in an attempt to clear it from the latest broadcasted blast. And then she worried about whether that head shaking could have shimmered enough to reveal her cloak-concealed position. It was enough for her to reconsider Crookshanks' strongly expressed desire to stay with his barnyard harem. She'd dearly miss her familiar, but maybe that was the price to be paid for maintaining her sanity, and retaining some mental privacy?

Musings over whether Luna Lovegood could be trusted as a holiday cat-sitter were interrupted by a huge wave of raw, unmitigated anger.

The dash down the half-flight of stairs was frantic enough to throw back the concealment's cloak's hood, which meant that it was seemingly a disembodied head that burst into Harry's bedroom and hissed, "What's wrong?"

Hermione's brain eventually caught up with her feet, and she processed what she was looking at…Fleur aiming her wand at Harry's neon-blue pubes.

The teen-aged witch ignored her roommate's shushing and dashed across the room, casting off her concealment cloak so that her boyfriend knew where to wrap his arms as she pulled him into a hug.

"Oh, Harry! How could they!"

Fleur watched Hermione console her boyfriend for a bit. Then she picked up the concealment cloak and told the younger couple that she would stand watch while Hermione helped Harry deal with this latest indignity.

Hermione thanked Fleur for the offer, and then said, "Don't do anything that I wouldn't do."

"I can say the same, no?"

The Muggleborn giggled as she reached down and squeezed her boyfriend's bare bum. "Not a whole lot of constraints on either of us, then?"

Fleur's grin disappeared under the hood of her goblin-tailored concealment cloak.

**oo00OO00oo**

The ladder hidden within the hollowed-out tree trunk had rungs that were spaced for a goblin's reach. Fortunately, Bill's experiences as a Gringott's curse-breaker allowed him to descend without incident. In fact, it was the number of rungs, rather than their spacing, that was beginning to tire his arms. Not that he was unhappy about the distance. Quite the opposite, actually, because these vertical shafts were only used by the goblins to penetrate defensive wards. The better the ward scheme, the longer the access tubes...and he had designed the Burrow's ward scheme.

The vertical shaft finally opened up into a horizontal tunnel wide enough for two goblins to stand side-by-side. The tunnel was also tall enough for a goblin to stand up straight…but just barely, which meant that Bill had stoop down almost to the point of crawling on hands and knees to follow his escort. Needless to say, there wasn't any provided sympathy from that escort. Not that it was expected; Bill was quite used to these types of goblin-sized working conditions.

They passed by two more vertical chutes and ladders as they travelled laterally. There also was a spot where side-tunnels branched out perpendicular to their tunnel. Bill assumed these led to different surveillance points. Fifty feet beyond this intersection, the tunnel opened up into a larger and (thankfully) taller room-sized excavation that was decorated more like a business office than a bunker. There was a goblin with stripes on his uniform's sleeves sitting behind a desk on the far side of the room.

"Here he is, Sir," Bill's escort spat in Gobbledygook.

"Leave us, Shite for Brains," the sitting goblin barked.

The escort winced, then spun on his heels and began walking back towards his sentry position.

"No, not back to your post, Shite for Brains!" the ranking goblin barked. "Go find Snail Licker and have him take your place. You obviously need some rest if this human was able to detect your location so easily."

The junior goblin's eyes darted towards Bill as he reached for his dagger.

"Now, Shite for Brains!" the senior goblin barked.

The sentry dashed towards a different side tunnel, growling at Bill the entire way.

"Have a seat, Curse-Breaker," the senior goblin said.

Bill nodded as he followed orders and sat in the uncomfortable stone-hewn chair in front of the desk.

"His name really isn't Shite for Brains, is it?" he asked.

The senior goblin smiled. "It is now."

"Lovely," Bill sighed.

"Time is money, Weasley."

"I agree, Team Leader…"

"Team Leader is just fine, Curse-breaker."

"Yes, Team Leader."

"So what tipped you off?"

"Excuse me, Team Leader?"

"How did you spot Shite for Brains?"

"Oh…I spotted the Gobbledygook rune that was carved into the tree trunk."

"Fuck, me!" the goblin cursed. He let out a deep sigh and shook his head. "I can already hear the excuses…Sorry, Sir, but the trees all looked the same…"

"Well, it helped that I could read Gobbledygook. And the rune was pretty well hidden."

"Unlike your shagging, Curse Breaker?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your shagging locations…not very well hidden at all."

Bill shrugged. A small smile formed on his lips as he quipped, "She wasn't complaining."

The team leader stared at Bill for a few seconds, then let out a loud, braying laugh.

"Yes, quite the opposite, wasn't it, Curse-breaker?" he asked. "Not much subtlety in your message sending either."

Bill shrugged once more. "It apparently worked."

"That it did…such a novel way of delivering your message," the goblin warrior stated, as he retrieved a piece of parchment from a pocket and began to read.

"T_he following words were spoken by Bird at 6:25 p.m., 30 June human time, as she was being shagged on the front lawn by Big Red…_."

The goblin looked up from the parchment, then cleared his throat and adopted a far more feminine tone of voice.

"_Oh, Bill, I love your big fat clock!_" the goblin read. "_Give me that big fucking clock of yours! Feels so good when you switch it! Switch it harder! Switch that big fat clock in me!"_

The goblin warrior took a moment to chuckle, then asked, "Switch it, Curse-Breaker Weasley? Is that what you humans are calling it these days?"

Bill grinned.

The goblin rolled his eyes, then continued reading from the transcript.

"_Give it to me, Bill! Give it to me! I am going to come! Going to come all the way to the bank! Going to port your big fucking key all night long. Going to...tonight at midnight_….[subject then shrieked something unintelligible as she experienced orgasm]."

The goblin folded the parchment and placed it back within his pocket.

"You're lucky that we had someone who could understand French well enough to make sense of your mate's orgasmic shrieks, Curse-breaker," he stated.

Bill smiled. "Just had faith in the thoroughness of your team's surveillance skills."

"I am disappointed that you chose such a…naked…form of communication."

"Hermione is the only other witch or wizard around here that knows French," Bill replied. "And we were doing that on turned time…already knew that we weren't going to get caught with our pants down, and if we weren't going to be busted for shagging on the front lawn, well, then…"

"Then it was unlikely that your Veela mate would be caught sending a secret message as she rode your big fat clock?"

"Something like that," Bill said with a grin.

The goblin muttered something under his breath as he reached down and pulled open a desk drawer. From that drawer came a different piece of parchment, a self-inking quill, and a full-scale replica of Molly's clock.

"Here's what your Veela was moaning about…you'll need to sign for it."

Bill looked at the clock face and frowned.

"It's no longer a perfect copy…my mother switched out some of the locations tonight."

The goblin shrugged. "It's not my problem."

"I can probably transfigure it," Bill decided. "So what about the portkey?" he asked.

"You mean the _big fucking key_ that your mate is going to_ port all night long_?"

"Yeah, that one."

The goblin warrior shook his head.

"The situation has changed," he stated. "The midnight meeting will now take place here."

"Here?" asked Bill, looking around the excavated space.

"You have a problem with following orders, Curse-Breaker?" the goblin growled.

Bill glared across the desk.

"My orders came directly from the Board of Auditors, and you're not in my chain of command," he spat. "So unless you can prove that this sudden change in plans came from them…."

The goblin warrior waved off Bill's statement.

"Fine, don't believe me. We'll just sit here and wait for Account Manager Chokebar to tell you the same thing…assuming that he's still in your chain of command?"

Bill glanced at his watch and decided that he could survive a few more minutes with the team leader. He nodded his head, and then asked, "So how is Chokebar going to get here?"

The goblin warrior snorted as he gestured for Bill to walk with him down the side exit of the excavated room. The curse-breaker's eyes widened when they turned a corner and he spotted the narrow gauge track.

As they stood there and waited for Potter account manager to arrive, Bill wondered just how much it had cost the goblins to extend the Gringott's underground cart network all the way out to Ottery St. Catchpole.

**oo00OO00oo**

Fleur's nose told her that Hermione had found a way to dampen some of Harry's anger even before the wizard opened his bedroom door with a goofy grin on his face. She returned the smile, and asked, "Sex makes everything better, n'est pas?"

Harry winced a little as he sheepishly ran his fingers through his hair. "We didn't go that…I mean…."

"Another tea break, then?" Fleur asked.

"What does that mean?"

"Ask your lover," Fleur teased as she brushed past Harry and entered the bedroom. She found Hermione hunched over the desk that sat against the far wall.

The Muggleborn turned and asked, "How else could I convince him that smooth is sexy?"

"By not tickling your nose as he added milk to your tea?"

Hermione offered Fleur a brilliant smile.

"Maybe," she coyly replied. "All kinds of possibilities now that my boyfriend isn't jail-bait."

Fleur's eyes lit up. "Of course! It is after midnight!" She turned towards Harry and pulled him into a hug as she kissed both cheeks.

"Happy Birthday, Master! Would you like my presents now?"

"Fleur!" Hermione hissed.

Harry shook his head as he pushed back from Fleur's embrace.

"Quit teasing," he said.

"Of course, Master…your wish is your sex slave's command!" Fleur teased.

Harry sighed. "If that's the case, then go help Hermione while I finish packing."

"You do not wish to give me your birthday spankings?"

"It's the birthday boy that gets spanked," Hermione stated.

"Well, if that's the case…"

Hermione said, "Just get over here and help me separate the wheat from the chaff."

Fleur tilted her head so that she could get a better view of the desk.

"What is that, ma Cherie?" she asked.

Hermione stepped to the side and revealed three small piles of curly hair.

"I'm separating out the pubes that were hit with tracking charms," she explained. "Harry was all for banishing the lot of them to Hell once I was done using the depilatory charm on him, but…"

"Hermione, you are using my tracking charm detection spell?" Fleur asked. "I thought that you were worried about how much magic was needed to cast it?"

Hermione shook her head. "I'm using a simpler spell that determines whether an object is charmed or not, and just assuming that any detected magic is a tracking charm. That's how I double-checked that I'd gotten all of them."

"Really? What a shame…I was thinking that I need to check your work."

Harry snorted from across the room. "Oh, no…Hermione was very thorough."

Fleur shook her head. She pointed towards the piles of pubic hairs and asked, "But why go to the trouble?"

"I convinced Harry that there still might be some good use for these bad boys," Hermione said.

Her boyfriend added, "As long as my pubes are here, they'll reckon that I'm still here."

Fleur asked, "Why not just leave the entire pile, then?"

Hermione shook her head and sighed. "You do realize that a tracking charm can only be applied to one object at a time, right?"

"Yes…so if there is more than one charmed hair, then the spell was cast…"

"Forty-seven different times and counting," Hermione stated.

Harry let out a deep sigh. "When would someone have had the chance to cast that spell on me forty-seven fucking times? And who? Don't know what would be grosser…if it was Molly who cast the tracking spells, or Dumbledore."

"Now Harry," said Hermione. "Remember that Death Eaters could have placed them on you."

"Why would that be possible?" Fleur asked. "If they were close enough to jinx his pubic hairs, they would have been close enough to simply kill him off."

"Ssssh!" said Hermione. "We don't want to discount the possibility."

"Why not?"

"Because it justifies what we're thinking about doing with the hairs."

"Oh?" said Fleur. "And what is that?"

"Might send someone on a wild goose chase," said Hermione.

"Or a wild hare chase, as it were," Harry added. He then asked, "So what were you doing out there?"

The French witch smiled. "Making the punishment fit the crime," she replied. "I was so upset at what had been done to you, Harry…so I snuck into Molly's bedroom, reapplied the _Somnus_ charm, then numbed her privates."

"Why did you do that?"

"So that she wouldn't wake up when I permanently jinxed all of her short hairs to grow inward," Fleur replied.

"Ouch!" Hermione hissed, as she reflexively reached down and covered her crotch. She then turned to Fleur and asked, "So what if it was Dumbledore who cast the tracking charms, rather than Molly?"

The part-Veela snorted. "This is a concern, coming from the witch who had already suggested that I could torture Molly by releasing my Allure on her after she had been tied down and petrified?"

"Well…"

"Enough," said Fleur. "Let us complete the wheat separation, and make the brainstorming over what to do with Harry's thicket."

It took little time for the three of them to isolate the offending hairs and flesh out a disposal plan. Not enough time, as it turned out, for Fleur to run out of ways to playfully tease the other two before Bill returned from his underground meeting with the goblins.

**oo00OO00oo**

Explaining to Bill why there was now an envelope on Harry's desk that contained seventy-three of his pubic hairs took a backseat to Bill's explanation of why he'd been away longer than they had expected.

"First off, Hermione's parents are safe and sound," Bill reported. "At least according to the goblins."

"Should we be concerned about that qualifier?" Harry asked.

The curse-breaker shook his head. "No, they said that Roger and Emily were already with Fleur's parents. I doubt that they would lie about something so easily verifiable."

"Unless someone else was feeding them bad information," Fleur countered.

"Yes, well…if you are worried about trusting Goblin motivations you'll love this next part…they've decided to move the client meeting."

"To where?"

"Here, actually."

Harry looked around his bedroom. "Here, here?" he asked.

"No, here as in four hundred feet beneath the Burrow," Bill replied.

"Beneath the Burrow?" Hermione asked.

Bill nodded. "I still can't believe that the bastards tunneled all the way out here."

"They what?"

"They extended the Gringott's underground track system by adding a branch line to the Burrow," Bill explained. "It's how they've been able to support the surveillance operation….and it's also how they plan on getting us out of here."

"So let me get this straight," said Harry. "Instead of using a portkey to travel to Gringott's and holding my meeting there, they want to hold the meeting first, and then send us to Gringott's by cart?"

"That's the gist of it."

"I don't like it," Harry replied. "It's a last second change that takes away our leverage."

"What leverage?" Fleur asked.

"They want me to assume my lordship so that I can legally sign a will that would prevent the Ministry from seizing my estate if I die," said Harry. "They also want to keep my money in their vaults, rather than move it all to North America. If I do all of the lordship will writing stuff here, inside the Burrow's wards…"

Hermione completed her boyfriend's comment. "What's to keep them from then deciding that Harry is better off stuck here for the rest of the summer, firmly within Gringott's territory?"

Bill thought about these concerns for a few moments. "Well, it wouldn't be a smart customer service plan, for one. You are going to eventually get out from Mum's control."

Harry shook his head. "Eventually isn't soon enough."

Hermione asked, "Did they give any justifications for switching the meeting location?"

Bill nodded. "Yes, actually…they raised an issue that's been in the back of my mind all Summer."

"What's that?"

"Our oaths to the Order of the Phoenix," Bill replied. "Fleur and I swore on our magic to support the Order and its missions, and the Order's number one mission is keeping Harry safe."

"And?"

"And I may have designed the Burrow's wards too well for our own good," Bill replied. "The Goblins claim that the only places in Britain more better wards right now are Gringott's and Hogwarts."

"So, you're saying that neither you nor Fleur could help Harry escape from the Burrow because just about every place he travels to would be less safe than here?" Hermione asked.

"It's not that cut and dry," Bill admitted. "There is, however, enough uncertainty for there to be a concern. On the other hand, if I'm able to swear fealty to Harry before we leave, it's a moot point."

Harry asked, "What if I claim lordship and grant the boon here, but refuse to execute a will until after we have escaped?"

"That might work," said Fleur. "But I was thinking that we still might have leverage even if you did execute a will here…depending on how that will is written."

Harry's gaze snapped towards Bill. He had already told the curse breaker how he wanted the will set up, but hadn't shared that decision with anyone else, for fear that it would make things funny between Hermione and him. But at this point, he felt he had to say something.

He reached out for Hermione's hand and said, "Everything would go to you."

"What? To me?" Hermione gasped. "But I'm not even your…."

"As far as I'm concerned, you _are_ family, Hermione," insisted Harry.

The messy-haired wizard was wrapped up in a crushing hug.

Fleur brushed away a happy tear from her cheek, then clapped her hands together.

"Well, that answers my question, then," she decided. "If Hermione is the sole beneficiary, then we have the leverage even if the will becomes a legal document."

"Why's that?" Harry asked (still enveloped in Hermione's arms).

"Because Hermione is still an under-aged witch," Fleur explained.

"Not when it comes to the age of consent, thank you very much!" Hermione quipped.

"But you are under-aged as far as the Ministry is concerned…at least until September," Fleur replied. "So…if Harry passes his estate to you, and if you then pass on without creating a will, the Ministry still gets to claim the estate."

"Wouldn't my estate automatically go to my parents, as long as they're still alive?" Hermione asked.

Bill shook his head. "They would not allow the Potter estate to pass into Muggle hands," he explained.

"Ah…so that means that the Goblins would have to start sucking up to Hermione, too!" Harry declared.

Fleur chuckled. "I think that they already know that keeping Hermione happy is vital to keeping Harry happy."

"I still worry about the fact that they sprung this on us at the last minute," said Hermione. "You said before that the Auditors were intentionally keeping you from interacting with Harry's account manager, yet here he is tonight?"

Bill shrugged. "Well, it makes sense if it's a meeting between client and account manager. It might be internal bank politics at work, but that could be either good or bad. The plan all along was for us to portkey to the front steps of Gringott's. If the good goblins were worried that the bad goblins would take advantage of that plan, then getting to the bank by a different route, and keeping the change a secret, really makes a lot of sense."

Harry let out a deep sigh. "So what do you think we should do, Bill?"

The curse breaker rubbed his chin as he weighed the different options.

"Chokebar is already here," he stated. "So are the lordship paperwork and the ring. "

"What do you think, Hermione?"

The Muggleborn chewed on her lower lip. "Even if we were to walk outside of the wards and flag down the Knight Bus…we still would have to meet with the goblins at some point within a goblin-controlled setting. So…"

"So let's go with the devil that we know…the devil that is waiting for us below?" Harry asked.

"That's what I'm thinking."

"What about my invisibility cloak, though?" Harry asked. "The plan was to retrieve it on the way out."

"The goblins offered to retrieve it…for a small fee, of course," said Bill.

Harry shook his head. "I'd feel safer having it in hand before we cross the ward line…can we grab it first, and then go underground for the meeting?"

"I don't see why not," Fleur replied. "We could even use the same plan!"

Bill nodded. "The goblins did tell me that Diggle is the only one out there patrolling the ward line."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You just want another excuse to have some more outdoor sex."

"Why must we have an excuse?" the French witch asked.

Harry cast a _Tempus_ charm.

"Right, then…we've got boons to grant and carts to catch…we'll retrieve the cloak, then regroup back here before meeting with the goblins below."

Bill nodded in agreement. "I'll wait to switch out clocks, then. Meet you two ladies downstairs in five?" he asked.

Fleur and Hermione agreed…so long as the five-minute countdown clock didn't start until after they sealed the new deal with kisses from their boyfriends.

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione and Fleur were in their bedroom a few minutes later when the Muggleborn swung her rucksack over a shoulder and asked, "So how do I look?"

Fleur gave a look of approval over her roommate's all-black commando outfit.

"I'd rather see you wearing a little black dress, but under the circumstances…there is just one more thing to complete the outfit, no?" The French witch then handed her roommate a satiny dark gray cloak.

Hermione frowned. "You don't have to give me your concealment cloak…I've got one in my pack, right?"

"That one is only ready-to-wear," Fleur replied. "Mine has been accessorized…you did not notice when you borrowed it earlier this evening?"

The part-Veela flipped her cloak inside out and pointed towards a wide chest-high pocket built into the lining. She reached inside this pocket and did a "Mary Poppins" by pulling out a five-foot long broomstick.

The Muggleborn witch winced as the broom was held out for her inspection.

"You know that I hate to fly, right?"

"Just in case."

"You'd be better off giving this to Harry, and letting me ride on his stick."

Fleur giggled. "Oh, ma Cherie, you don't need my permission to ride on your lover's broomstick!"

"You know what I mean!"

The French witch nodded. "Harry will use Bill's cloak. It has the same upgrades."

"Still…I'm pants at flying," Hermione insisted.

"You still need to carry one in case of an emergency," said Fleur.

"But what about you?"

The part-Veela handed her cloak to Hermione, then pulled her dressing gown wide open to expose its unlined interior (as well as her bits).

"As you can see, I have no place to hide a broomstick," she quipped. "At least, not one that is that long and that thick!"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

Fleur loosely tied her gown closed. "If all four of us must make the emergency flight, either outside or underground in the cart tunnels, then Bill and I can use that broomstick you are holding, while you ride on Harry's."

"I still don't know why you aren't dressing in your traveling clothes as well," Hermione said, as she pushed the twig end of Fleur's broomstick down into the magically-enlarged cloak pocket.

"This is just until we retrieve Harry's cloak from Diggle, no?" the French witch replied. She cupped her breasts through the thin silk fabric of her dressing gown and added, "For the plan to work these must not be concealed."

"You don't have to be naked to release your allure, Fluer."

"But I have to entice the guard to come close enough to be affected, no?"

Hermione scoffed at the idea. "I still say that this is just an excuse for you two to show off more of your kinky exhibitionist sides."

The French witch ignored this comment as she rummaged through her rucksack and pulled a little rubber ducky out of her beach bag.

**oo00OO00oo**

The hallway was quiet and clear (as long as you ignored the loud snoring that was coming from Ron's bedroom). The two witches cautiously walked downstairs to the kitchen. Bill and Harry were there waiting for them, wearing mirror-imaged kits (the barefoot curse-breaker wearing just a dressing gown, and Harry dressed in black camo). Crookshanks was sitting at Harry's feet, broadcasting nervous anticipation in both directions.

"All set?" Bill whispered.

"Let's do it, baby!" Fleur purred, handing her fiancé her rucksack. As Bill hid his rucksack and Fleur's in the kitchen pantry, she handed her wand to Hermione, then opened her dressing gown and let it slip off her shoulders.

A breath caught in Bill's throat as he walked out of the pantry and spotted his naked fiancée. His eyes darted from his naked girlfriend towards Harry, who was keeping his gaze firmly planted on his own boots. He turned back towards Fleur and asked, "What are you doing?"

"We must have the dress rehearsal for the outside performance, no?" she asked.

Bill snorted. "I think we've done more than enough of that kind of rehearsing."

"Is that a complaint?" Fleur asked.

"Oh, hell no," Bill quickly replied. He looked towards Hermione and Harry and said, "It's just…a lot brighter here in the kitchen compared to outside."

"You are embarrassed to be naked in front of another witch?" Fleur asked.

"Erm…"

"But you had no hesitation removing your clothes in front of my friend Caroline?"

"Well, that was different," Bill insisted. "It's not as if we're about to have a three-way…"

"It better not be," Harry quipped.

Bill looked over towards the younger couple and noted that they were still inspecting the kitchen floor. He let out a sigh, then stepped towards Harry and pushed the end of his wand into Harry's hand. The messy-haired teen took hold of the wand without looking up.

Crookshanks provided a welcomed focal point as Bill's robe slipped to the floor.

"Meow!"

Harry squatted down and rubbed the part-Kneazle's back.

"No worries, Crooks…we're just going out for a bit," he said.

"_Meow!"_

Hermione dropped down to Harry's side and scooped her familiar into her arms. "Oh, Crookshanks…you're such a worrier," she said. "Are you that anxious to take an underground cart ride?" She then kissed the part-Kneazle on the top of his head and added, "You just stay back, and make sure that Molly doesn't muck things up for us, okay?"

Crookshanks looked up and held Hermione's gaze as feelings of love and protectiveness and reassurance passed between them. The familiar then jumped out of Hermione's arms and sauntered towards the base of the stairs.

"Thanks, Crooks," the Muggleborn witch said, as the familiar took up a sentry position facing up the stairs. Hermione took her boyfriend's hand and helped him stand up straight, then turned towards Bill and Fleur and gasped.

"Hey, you two…keep it in your pants!"

Fleur tore her lips away from Bill's and coyly replied, "But we are not wearing pants, ma Cherie!"

"You know what I mean," Hermione replied. "Quicker we retrieve Harry's cloak, quicker we can properly celebrate boons and birthdays."

"But you two are not fully dressed, yet!" Fleur protested.

Hermione looked down at her outfit and said, "Fine."

The time it took for Harry and Hermione to disappear under their respective concealment cloaks was time enough for Fleur and Bill to run through a bit more dress rehearsal.

**oo00OO00oo**

Uncertain loyalties and internal bank politics made for an uneasy wait as the manager of the Potter and Black accounts sat with the surveillance team leader in the bunker deep beneath the Burrow's orchard.

"He should have had the boy here by now," Chokebar muttered, as he reached for his pocket watch and once again checked the time.

The warrior snorted. "Do you hover over your investments with this same level of impatience, Account Manager? He won't move unless and until the building interior is secure."

Chokebar scoffed. "I was told that you and your warriors were instructed to prevent any external threats from gaining that kind of access."

The warrior's nostrils flared. "Are your questioning my team's competence, Arse Manager?"

The just-insulted Account Manager followed his opposite's lead and slowly moved his hand towards the hilt of his steel-spiked mace. "_Should_ it be questioned, Troll Breath?"

The rapidly escalating tension was stilled (at least momentarily) when one of the six crystals that were sitting on the team leader's desk lit up. The warrior reached for the glowing stone and activated the communication device with a scrape of his fingernail.

"Apple Base this is Apple One. Big Red and Bird have exited rear of house."

Chokebar spat out, "Finally!"

The team lead quieted the Account Manager with a wave of his hand.

"Copy that, Apple One. Just those two, then?"

"Looks that way, Apple Base."

"Don't give me any 'looks that way' shite, Apple One! How many vectors are there?"

The reply came after a few tense moments of silence.

"Four vectors, Apple Base… two under concealment cloaks, walking just fast enough to be spotted behind the naked couple."

"Repeat that?"

"Two humans wearing concealment cloaks, walking behind Big Red and Bird, who aren't wearing anything."

"You mean that they aren't wearing cloaks?"

"Apple Base, Big Red and Bird aren't wearing anything…they're buck naked."

"By the Gods…" the team lead muttered. "Apple One, please tell me that those two Gringott's employees are at least armed."

"Negative, Apple Base. No wands. Looks like Bird is carrying a smaller bird in her hand."

"What the fuck are they doing?" spat Chokebar.

The team leader sighed. "Intentionally attracting attention, I imagine. But doing it unarmed? They better have Profit and his mate watching their backs!" He gave the crystal face a harsh scrape of his nail and barked, "Report, Apple Two!"

The goblin manning the second surveillance post whispered, "Big Red is leading Bird straight towards my position, Apple Base."

"They're going to reveal our location to the human sentry!" Chokebar spat.

The team leader waved off the account manager's comment as he scratched a different crystal face.

"Apple Five, is the human still with you by the pond?"

"I have detected no movement or sound since my last report, Apple Base. Although that might soon change. I can hear Big Red and Bird's footsteps from here."

"You might be able to hear them, Apple Five…but that useless wizard sentry has human ears. Focus your attention and your ears on that sentry."

"Understood, Apple Base."

"Update, Apple Two!"

The goblin sentry hiding within the base of the hollowed out apple tree whispered, "Big Red just walked up and placed a hand on this tree! Should I offer challenge?"

"Negative, Apple Two."

"Why not?" asked Chokebar.

"He's up to something," the team leader stated. "This might be a clever way of showing the other three which tree to run to in case of trouble."

"Wouldn't be any trouble if Weasley would simply lead them down the ladder!"

The team leader shrugged. "Maybe Profit wants to avoid paying us to retrieve his cloak?"

The goblin warrior demanded an update from the Apple Two location.

"Apple Base, Big Red has now stepped away from the tree and is leading Bird back towards the path. And…it looks like the young couple are stopping for a bit of romantic foreplay under the stars…"

"For some what?" the team leader asked. "Give me some goddamn details, Apple Two!"

"Copy that, Apple Base," the sentinel quickly replied. "Right now, Big Red and Bird are hungrily pressing their opened lips together as their tongues wrestle for dominance. Big Red is fondling Bird's heaving breasts, while she playfully tickles Big Red's ball sack with her little bird."

"With her little bird?" Chokebar asked with a snort.

The team lead waved off the account manager's question, just before he rephrased it.

"Apple Two, what do you mean by her little bird?"

"Exactly what I said, Apple Base," the sentry replied. "She was rubbing that rubber toy that she uses to clean the pond against Big Red's balls…and now she's running it down the length of his turgid manhood…and she is moaning rapturously as she lovingly drags the toy duck's beak in circles around the head of Big Red's massive man-meat…"

"That's enough detail, Apple Two."

"Copy that, Apple Base."

"I'd be worried about that one, if I were you," Chokebar said with a laugh.

The surveillance team leader rolled his eyes as he covered the communication crystal with the palm of his hand. He then leaned across the desk and whispered, "That's Snail Licker. The pervy twerp is a division commander's nephew."

"Ah…enough said," Chokebar replied knowingly.

"He was also the only one in the barracks that could lip read French."

"Even more reason," the account manager agreed.

The surveillance team leader fired a question towards the second crystal.

"Where are the other two, Apple Two?"

"What other two?"

"The two that Apple One spotted wearing concealment cloaks!"

"Oh…haven't seen them."

"What?"

"Sorry, Apple Base…you did ask me to focus on the details, didn't you?"

The team leader gritted his teeth as he swiped a long sharpened fingernail over all six message crystals.

"Attention all units…ignore Big Red's and Bird's rutting. Focus on finding the two that are hiding underneath concealment cloaks! Apple Five, let me know if that human sentry moves even an inch!"

"Copy, Apple Base out."

**oo00OO00oo**

The goblin stationed at the Apple Three surveillance location reported to base when "Big Red" and "Bird" emerged from the woods a few minutes later and walked hand-in-hand towards the pond. He watched the female toss a yellow rubber ducky into the scum-covered pond, but ignored the charmed toy as it began to clear the water. He also tore his eyes away from the naked couple and refocused his attention on the last spot where he had heard the hidden human's footfall.

Not that he would have focused on the couple in the absence of those orders. They were both fit…by human standards. And the goblin could appreciate the fact that "Bird" was a fine female specimen…as far as near-humans go. But it wasn't as if he was sexually aroused by her bouncing breasts or obscenely-long legs. The goblin scout left that for Snail Licker and the desperate sons-of-bitches whose remote postings lacked track-access to goblin whorehouses. He was neither deviant nor all that desperate…as was proven during previous occasions when his concealed position had been enveloped by the part-Veela's cloud of allure. It hadn't affected him at all…and he wouldn't have even known that she had released her attack were it not for how stupidly two of her companions had reacted.

Thirty feet away, a second sentinel watched with undivided attention as Bill and Fleur stood by the water's edge and pressed their naked bodies against each other. That sentry's attention should have been focused in the opposite direction, out beyond the ward line. But it wasn't every day (or every moonlit night, for that matter) that an old man like Dedalus Diggle was presented with this kind of voyeuristic opportunity.

The struggle to remain hidden and quiet under the borrowed invisibility cloak became that much more difficult when Fleur reached down and began to stroke her lover's erection. Diggle watched as Bill reached up and began teasing a nipple between his fingers. He had never seen such a sight playing out before his eyes. He didn't blink…he couldn't blink for fear of missing, within that fraction of a second, something that was even more erotic. The old wizard reached down (while still under the cloak) and pulled out his wrinkled old todger. One hand gripped the invisibility cloak tightly shut while the other hand began to stroke.

The rubbing became more insistent when the French witch turned in Diggle's direction, dropped to her hands and knees, and begged her lover to claim her from behind. Eyes that were glued to Bill todger as it zeroed in on its target failed to spot the smile that formed on  
Fleur's lips. Suddenly, nothing was more important to the ninety-eight year old wizard than achieving the perfect orgasm. Nothing.

Diggle couldn't feel his knees as they began to shake. He paid no mind to the light-headedness that was muddling his brain, or to the dizziness. The rush of hormones and adrenalin helped him ignore the tightness and the pain that was filling his chest. He kept on stroking, and stroking, dying to get to the point of release.

Literally dying, as it turned out.

Diggle's aorta burst two seconds after the first burst of ejaculate, and he fell dead on his back.

**oo00OO00oo**

Bill whispered tender protests when Fleur crawled forward and pulled herself free of his thrusts.

"He is here, and I have him," she quietly explained.

Bill whined, "Well I'm here, and you were about to have me too!"

A giggle escaped from Fleur's lips as she stood and brushed off her knees. The part-Veela then called out, "Monsieur Diggle?"

Fleur started walking towards the ward line.

"Monsieur Diggle?" she called out again. "I know that you are out there. You want to reveal yourself to me, no?"

The part-Veela frowned when her question went unanswered.

"Monsieur Diggle…you want to come out and show me how excited you are, don't you?"

There was a rustle of movement behind Fleur as a body emerged from the shadows. Bill spun towards the rustle and hissed, "Stay down!"

Harry Potter flipped his concealment cloak back over his shoulders and walked towards Bill with a wand in each hand. He held the curse-breaker's wand out, butt-end first. Once Bill took the wand Harry untied the cloak and held that out as well.

"Looks like you need something covered more than I do."

A feminine voice hissed, "Less banter, more focus, you berks!"

Bill glanced in the direction of the new voice and nodded his head.

"Right then…pass me Fleur's wand, and cover my back."

"Cover yourself, while you're at it," Harry quipped. Not waiting for his hidden girlfriend to slip Fleur's wand into Bill's hand, the Boy-Dressed-in-Black jogged towards the French witch's position. When Harry reached Fleur's side, he asked, "What's wrong?"

"I could smell his excitement even before I released my allure," Fleur said. "I can still smell his release. But he is not responding to my call, and I can no longer sense his excitement."

"Maybe he came and went?" Harry asked. "Or maybe he passed out after he came, same way that Ron did on the beach?"

Harry turned towards Bill and Hermione as they walked towards him, with wands drawn and the hoods of their concealment cloaks pulled down. It was an odd and almost unnerving sight; heads without bodies, and wand-wielding hands without arms.

Bill handed Fleur her wand, then began systematically casting _hominem revelio _spells. Fleur could have done the same, but trusted her nose more than the spell. She took a few steps towards the ward line, then stopped short.

"He's here," she announced, pointing towards the ground a few feet in front of her.

The other three quickly gathered by her side. Bill cast a _Lumos_ spell that illuminated a pair of legs, seemingly cut off just above the knees. Trousers pushed down onto boot-covered ankles exposed those knees to the night.

"Looks like the cloak rode up when he fell flat on his back…guess I was right," Harry said with a sigh. He stepped forward and nudged one of the bared knees with the tip of his boot.

"Wakey, wakey, Diggle!"

"Harry, don't!" Hermione hissed.

"What?" Harry complained. "You want me to take the cloak while he's still out for the count?"

"Better than having to explain why he won't need it anymore," Fleur reasoned.

Bill held his wand out and cast a sleeping charm towards one of the knees.

"Go on, then, Harry," he said.

The-Boy-Who-Lived sighed as he squatted down and reached towards where he guessed Diggle's chest would be. Once contact was made he found one edge of the invisibility cloak and pulled it back.

Hermione reached for Fleur's arm when she spotted wrinkled fingers wrapped around a wrinkled penis.

"Come on, we really don't need to see this," she reasoned. "Let's fish that duck out of the pond."

Fleur was quick to agree, and turned away from the body.

Bill cast a couple of _Scourgify_ spells to clean up the cloak lining while Harry worked on the knot that tied the invisibility cloak shut at Diggle's neck. Once the tied ends were free, he pushed the hood back from the wizard's face.

"Same dumb-arse smile that Ron had," he observed, reaching around the back of Diggle's head in an attempt to pull the hood free.

"Ewww…it's sticky back there as well!" Harry hissed.

Bill's eyes widened when the younger wizard pulled his hand free.

"Erm…Harry?"

"Yeah, Bill?"

The curse breaker shined a _Lumos _spell on Harry's hand.

"That's not spunk…it's blood."

"Shite!" Harry hissed. He squatted down, placed two fingers against the body's neck, and searched unsuccessfully for a pulse. It was then that he noticed that the hand that wasn't holding onto Diggle's bits was pressed against the left side of Diggle's chest.

"Is he….?"

Bill squatted down and said, "Help me roll him over."

The two wizards rolled the body until it was face down. Bill reached out and touched the bloody gash on the back of Diggle's head.

"Maybe he got that bump when he fell backward?" Harry asked.

"Either that, or he got it when somebody clubbed him on the back of the head," Bill replied. He pulled his blood-covered hand back and grabbed the edge of the invisibility cloak.

"What are you doing?" Harry hissed.

"We came here for your cloak, didn't we?"

"But…is he really dead?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, Shite!" Harry shouted.

Fleur and Hermione rushed back to see what was wrong.

"Wands out and cover us!" Bill hissed.

"What?"

"Diggle's dead!"

A look of horror formed on Fleur's face as she looked down at the corpse.

"I killed him!" she whispered.

"You did no such thing!" Bill insisted. "Somebody could have killed him with an Unforgivable…or with a blow to the head." After pulling Harry's cloak free from Diggle's corpse, Bill stood up and sucked in a deep breath.

"Screw the meeting," he decided. "It's time to fly."

"What?" Hermione asked. "You mean now?"

"Yeah," Bill replied. He reached inside his concealment cloak and pulled out a broomstick.

"Get these two out of the country," he told Fleur, passing her the broomstick.

"But what about you?"

"I'll clean this mess up, and fight a rear guard action, if needed."

"Against the goblins or against your parents?" Harry asked.

"Yes," Bill quipped. "Go on, then…mount up."

The younger wizard hesitated, but only for a second before he stepped towards Hermione and asked, "You have the other broom?"

The Muggleborn witch nodded as she reached inside her cloak and retrieved the second broomstick. Harry pulled it from her hands, got it to hover at waist height, then jumped aboard. He reached an arm out and hissed, "Hermione? C'mon!"

"But…Crookshanks?"

"I'll bring him with me," Bill promised.

Hermione thought for a moment, then took Harry's hand and climbed behind him onto the broomstick. She wrapped both arms around his chest, only to pull one of those arms free to stop Bill from throwing Harry's invisibility cloak over their heads.

"What about Fleur?" she shouted. "She needs to be covered!"

Bill glanced towards his fiancée, who had already mounted her broomstick. Fleur swung the tip of that stick around and pushed it forward until she was by the other three.

"It wouldn't work," Fleur insisted.

"What do you mean it wouldn't work?" Hermione asked. "It's Harry's invisibility cloak!"

"Yes, it is," Fleur replied. "And how would you two be able to follow me if I was wearing it?"

"But you're still naked!"

The French witch looked down her front, then looked over at the corpse lying on the ground.

"Doesn't matter…it's time to fly," she declared. Fleur then reached out and pulled Bill's head close enough for a desperate kiss.

The curse breaker reluctantly broke free from the embrace and cast a warming charm on Fleur. He then reached out to deliver a light spank to her bum and shouted, "Go!"

The teary-eyed part-Veela nodded, then glanced back towards the other two.

She said, "Stay on my arse, Harry!" then flew up towards the tree tops.

Hermione shook her head as Bill draped Harry's invisibility cloak over their heads.

"It's 'stay on my tail'," she muttered.

"Save the English language lesson for later, sweetheart," Harry quipped.

His girlfriend's retort was swallowed up by a rush of air as Harry kicked the broomstick into gear.

**oo00OO00oo**

Bill tracked the flight paths from the edge of the Burrow's ward line until the broomsticks dipped into the wooded valley of the River Otter and disappeared from view. He whispered an obscene (but accurate) assessment of the situation, then turned back towards Diggle's corpse.

Two very hacked-off and heavily-armed goblins were there waiting for him.

The head of the surveillance team raised his axe and growled out an insult in Gobbledeygook. Chokebar, who was standing next to the warrior, reached up and grabbed the axe handle.

"Hold your edge," he barked. "I'm sure that Curse Breaker Weasley has a perfectly good reason for disobeying my orders."

Bill's wand was in hand, but he was fairly certain that the thrown battle axe would reach him before his curse would reach the goblin. He also knew that the concealment cloak he was wearing wouldn't keep goblin ears from detecting his footfalls. Deciding that a diplomatic approach would be less dangerous, he replied, "No battle plan survives first contact. The situation was fluid…it is still fluid…the field of battle demanded a different path."

"Excuses!" the warrior spat. "Give us one good reason why I shouldn't make an example of you and separate your head from your neck?"

"Because it would make Chokebar's only client very, very angry?" Bill asked.

The Potter account manager shook his head. "True enough. But there is no honor in hiding behind the boy's shirttails."

"If that's how you see it, then so be it," Bill replied. "Know this, though…the client was not happy about the sudden change in plans, and only agreed to them because he feared for Fleur's magic and mine."

"The oaths?" Chokebar asked.

Bill nodded.

"And you weren't worried about these oaths when you helped Profit onto his broomstick and told him to follow Bird's tail?"

Bill pointed his wand away from the two goblins and successfully cast a weakly-powered _Lumos _spell.

"Still have my magic," he noted. "Fleur couldn't have kept her broomstick in the air if she had lost hers. So either the oaths weren't all that powerful, or Harry really would be safer someplace else. My galleons are on the latter."

Chokebar snorted. "Rather ballsy bit of risk-taking."

Bill shrugged. "There were more important things to worry about, frankly."

"Such as…?"

The red-haired wizard nodded towards the body that lay at their feet. "Either Diggle was brought down by some unseen enemy, or Fleur's allure gave him a fatal heart attack."

Chokebar waved the unstained head of his mace in front of Bill's face. "There's no blood on our hands, and the perimeter is secure. He died of natural causes."

"Heart attack it is, then," Bill replied.

"A poor way to die, with your dick in your hand instead of your sword," the team leader snorted.

"Bah…he was a human," Chokebar spat. "Dying with a smile on his face was a great way to die."

The team leader rolled his eyes and turned back to Bill. "So why did this so-called field of battle require a change in plans?"

Bill let out a deep sigh. "You both know the Ministry's fucked-up attitudes about Veela and other non-human sentients…they'd have Fleur brought up on murder charges in a heartbeat."

"So she needed to leave this place and leave these shores? She could have done that just as easily in a cart."

"Only after waiting for Chokebar's business with Harry to conclude?" Bill asked. "And only after we walked back towards the Burrow?"

Chokebar kicked the corpse over so that it was face up again. He looked down, and asked, "So what evidence would the Ministry have that your mate killed this poor bastard by releasing her allure?"

"Why else would the old fart have been wanking?" Bill asked.

Chokebar smiled, looked up at Bill, then opened his mouth wide enough to allow a belly laugh to escape.

"You think that he died while lusting after your mate? BWAAAA-HAAAA-HAAAA!"

Bill nervously glanced around, wondering if the laughter was loud enough to wake the dead. Or his parents. Once the guffaws had been reduced to mere giggles, he turned back to Chokebar and apologized for not seeing any humor in the situation.

"It's not possible that Dedalus Diggle died while rubbing one off in response to your mate's allure," the account manager replied.

"Why is that?"

"Because he was even more bent than Albus Dumbledore!" Chokebar roared with laughter.

"What?" Bill hissed. "You're telling me that Diggle was gay? That Dumbledore is gay?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"But if he wasn't perving on Fleur, then whom was he perving on when he bit the dust?"

The goblin warrior standing beside Chokebar wasn't nearly as intelligent as the account manager. But after fifteen years in the barracks he was smart enough to get the joke, and he proved it by joining Bill's boss in some back-slapping laughter.

Bill didn't think that the unspoken answer to his question was nearly as funny (once he figured it out).

Once this second round of laughter died down, he asked, "Is there any proof that Diggle was a wizard's wizard? There was more than one Order meeting where Fleur caught him aroused and staring her way."

"And where were you when he was looking in her direction?" Chokebar asked.

Bill thought a second, then shook his head and muttered, "Right by her side, damn it."

"Unfortunately for you, we don't have any proof that Diggle was lusting over your…what did Snail Licker call it?" Chokebar asked.

The other goblin snickered. "His turgid manhood? His massive man-meat?"

"Yes, that it's…thanks," said Chokebar. He turned towards Bill and added, "At least no proof that we could offer without revealing our intelligence collection methods."

The team leader nodded. "Not that our testimony would be accepted by the humans, even were that not the case."

"So what do we do now?" Bill asked.

Chokebar considered this questing for a few moments, before pulling a small sack from his belt. He squatted down at the dead wizard's feet and opened the mouth of the bag. Bill didn't know what to think as he watched Diggle's entire body get sucked into the expandable bag's pocket dimension.

The account manager stood, and slipped the small pouch back onto his belt as if it weighed no more than a small number of coins.

"Problem solved," he decided. "Now get me my client back."

Bill said, "He's not going beyond Gringott's reach. You each still hold leverage over the other."

Chokebar asked, "He knows he can't take control of the wards down there until he claims his lordship and signs the rental agreement, right?"

"Yeah…and that he needs to claim lordship to be shot of Dumbledore and Mum. But that's only after he's safely away."

The goblin warrior asked, "So why did you stay behind?"

"Lots of reasons," Bill replied. "To set things right with you, to cover some tracks, to do some tidying up…"

"The perimeter is secure, and as far as we can tell, those you left inside the building are still sleeping," the Team Leader stated.

"Well that's something, at least," said Bill, as he glanced back towards the path that led to the Burrow. He scuffed up the ground where Diggle's body had rested, then asked, "You do know that there's going to be a shit storm of forensic magic thrown around here in a few hours, right?"

"We're expecting it," the team leader replied.

"So you might want to consider ripping up track and back-filling a few tunnels."

The goblin warrior spat on the ground. "You just worry about your own, curse breaker."

Chokebar shook his head. "I think that he is, actually," he stated. "Weasley is still a Gringott's employee, after all."

Bill smiled. "So you're not going to try to terminate my contract, then?"

The account manager slipped the handle of his spiked mace into his belt and shook his head.

"Not today, my friend…not today."

**oo00OO00oo**

Hermione had quickly decided that it was a lot harder sharing an invisibility cloak when you were also sharing a broomstick that was cruising at ninety-five miles per hour, two hundred feet above the treetops. At least when compared against all of the other times that Harry and she had used that cloak within the halls of Hogwarts.

The hardest part about their flight was accepting the need for her to ride blind. Had they been walking side-by-side under Harry's invisibility cloak, they could have shared glimpses out the thin gap in between the loosely-held front sides. But piloting a broomstick required a far-more unobstructed view. As a result, while Harry made effective use of the hood, Hermione was truly flying in the dark, shrouded under the robe's gossamer fabric with her cheek pressed against her boyfriend's back.

With thoughts racing in their heads faster than they were flying, and with the strong headwind in their face, neither Harry nor Hermione had said anything since flying out beyond the Burrow's ward line. Until, that is, Hermione felt Harry bring their broomstick to a full stop.

"What's wrong?" she whispered. "Why did we stop?"

"Because Fleur stopped," Harry replied, as he sat up straight on the hovering broomstick and flipped the edge of his invisibility cloak off of Hermione's head.

The Muggleborn took one look at how high they were hovering over the treetops, and quickly pressed her face against her boyfriend's back.

"Don't you want to see the coastline?" Harry asked.

"No, I'll just take your word that it's there, thank you very much."

Fleur swung her stick back around and faced Harry.

"That's the city of Sidmouth," she noted, nodding back over her shoulder. "Once we skirt around it, we've got a couple of options."

Harry shrugged. "I'm happy following you."

Hermione muttered, "Of course you'd be happy, following that view."

"Just in case we are separated," Fleur explained. "If we continued due south, we would eventually reach the French coastline. But it would be a shorter trip across open water if we followed the English coastline up to Dover, and then crossed to Calais."

"It'd be shorter over the water, but longer over British territory," Harry noted.

"Exactly," Fleur agreed. "As a compromise, we can follow the coast east for another forty miles or so, until we reach a red and white lighthouse. If we head out over the Channel from there, it's only seventy miles to Cherbourg."

"Sounds fine to me," said Harry.

"On my arse, then!" Fleur ordered, as she turned her broomstick around and sped off.

"It's tail," Hermione whined, as Harry pulled the cloak back over her head.

"We'll correct her next stop, okay?" Harry asked.

"And she's still naked!" Hermione hissed.

"Erm, yeah…you can correct that as well."

Harry took off before Hermione had the chance to say anything that could be heard above the headwind.

**oo00OO00o**

The wide turn around the lighthouse and the change in the sea air had clued Hermione into knowing when they had begun to flying over open water. Their airspeed was still high enough to limit conversation, and with the adrenaline rush wearing off, she had decided to keep alert and awake by mentally revising for the O.W.L. examinations that she had sat for two months previous. This was enough of a distraction to keep her from realizing that they were decelerating a second time, until they had come to a full stop.

"Harry?" she whispered. "What's going on? Are we there?"

"Not quite," Harry replied. "But we are far enough along for us to take off this bloody cloak again. You might enjoy the view better."

Hermione let out a little moan as she squeezed Harry and pressed her cheek against his back.

"I'm okay right here," she declared.

A voice behind her called out, "Even so, you will still need to uncover yourselves."

Hermione's eyes narrowed as Harry pulled his invisibility cloak away from her shoulders and brought the full nighttime sky into view. Unfortunately, removing the cloak also revealed the open water below.

"Yikes!" she squeaked, again responding to the instant vertigo by slamming her eyes shut and burying her face into Harry's back.

He brought a hand up off the broom handle and covered Hermione's white-knuckled grip.

"You okay, Sweetheart?"

"Both hands on the handle, Mister!"

"Yes, Dear."

"Oh, Hermione," Fleur called out. "Why can't you enjoy riding on Harry's broomstick?"

"I' don't fancy the risk of slivers?" Hermione quipped. She took a couple of steadying breaths, and then called out, "Fleur?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

"Why are you behind us now?"

"Because I must pee, and your boyfriend is too much of a gentleman to watch."

Hermione's firm grip allowed her to feel Harry's belly laugh before she heard it.

"Not an easy thing, I assure you," he quipped. "I am just dying to know how a broomstick-riding witch can pee in mid-air."

Fleur giggled, and replied, "Well, it is a lot easier when you are not wearing any clothes."

"I imagine so."

Hermione gave Harry's waist a squeeze. "Well, keep it in your pants, and also in your imagination, Mister."

"Yes, Dear."

The Muggleborn witch proved that you can still roll your eyes when your eyelids are shut. She sighed, and then asked, "So why can't we continue on under the invisibility cloak, then?"

There was a delayed response (which only added fuel to Harry's imagination).

"I am pretty certain that we are only four or five miles from the border," Fleur finally replied. "The magical gendarmes would take a dim view of anyone trying to slip into the country while wearing an invisibility cloak."

"So what's their view about slipping into the country naked?" Hermione asked.

Fleur let out a melodic laugh. "Oh, ma Cherie…you know that we French are far more relaxed about these things than the uptight British people, n'est pas?"

Hermione couldn't help but laugh at Fleur's joke. She then asked, "Well if we're that close…you really couldn't hold your water for a few more minutes?"

"We are close to the border…I did not say that we are close to the French coastline," Fleur replied. "Magical jurisdiction begins at the edge of the national ward line…halfway across the Channel."

"Ah…that makes sense."

"Bon, I am finished, Harry…shall we continue on?"

"Oui, oui!" Harry chirped, using an outrageous French accent. "Where you lead, I shall follow!"

Hermione felt the broom lurch a bit as Harry took one last look at the distant English shoreline, then brought the stick into a gentle 180 degree turn. She risked opening her eyes when Harry leaned forward and began to accelerate, and snorted when she visually confirmed the view that he had been following during the trip.

Fortunately, Fleur had selected a much more moderate air speed that allowed for conversations.

"What teen-aged male wouldn't want to follow that arse, huh Harry?" Hermione quipped.

Her boyfriend shrugged. "It's not bad."

"Right."

"Oh, geez," Harry whined. "It's no different than the view I gave you two on the beach."

"True."

"And it's a whole lot less than the view I had to give her tonight during the tracking charm check!"

"Fair enough."

"And shall I provide you with my review of the outdoor show that she and Bill gave us?"

Hermione leaned forward and planted a kiss behind Harry's ear to show that she was doing more teasing than complaining.

"Would you rather be following my bare arse, then?"

Harry groaned. "Why don't you drop your hands down towards my other stick and feel my reaction to that lovely thought?"

His girlfriend giggled. "That's okay…wouldn't want to distract the pilot."

"I could handle it!" Harry insisted.

"Nobody is going to be handling anything this far up in the air," said Hermione.

Fleur's estimate of how close they had been to the edge of the French area of magical control was based on separate estimates of flight time and average air velocities. That her calculation was a tad too conservative was proven when a larger-than-life glowing red "ARRÊT" sign suddenly popped into existence. Fleur and Harry pulled their broomsticks to abrupt stops as a rather angry voice boomed from the magical stop sign, shouting in French.

"HALT! YOU ARE ATTEMPTING UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY INTO THE MAGICAL REPUBLIC OF FRANCE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. THE BORDER PATROL WILL ARRIVE AT YOUR LOCATION IN…FOUR…MINUTES. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS DEMAND WILL RESULT IN ADDITIONAL FINES AND/OR PROSECUTIONS!"

"Well, isn't that a lovely welcome?" Harry quipped.

Fleur shook her head as she put her stick in reverse and hovered back towards the other two. She stopped once she was within reach of them, and said, "Don't worry, it will be fine."

The part-Veela glanced back over her shoulder, and suddenly let out a squeal of delight.

"We did it!" she shouted. "We did it!"

Fleur lunged towards Harry and pulled him into a bare-breasted embrace.

"Welcome to France, Harry Potter," she said, kissing the teen-aged wizard on both cheeks. She then broke the embrace just as quickly, and repeated the welcome (and the kissing) with Hermione. The English witch accepted the welcome with good humor, and pulled Harry into a three-way hovering hug.

Harry thoroughly enjoyed the hugging and the kissing for a few seconds. But then his brain kicked into gear and he risked spoiling the mood with a simple question.

"So now what?" he asked.

Fleur broke the embrace and leaned back over her broomstick. "Now we wait for the escort from the immigration and control office. From there I can contact my father, and we will be home in no time!"

"That's nice," said Hermione. "But shouldn't you be clothed for all that?"

The French witch giggled. "Unfortunately, I seemed to have left all my clothing back in England. Along with my fiancé. And my identification papers."

Momentarily forgetting her altitude, Hermione released her two handed grip around Harry and reached for her expandable button.

"Here, I'm sure I can find something you can wear," she insisted.

Harry looked back over his shoulder, and smiled when he noticed that the first thing Hermione pulled from the magical container was a black silk thong.

"Good luck slipping that thing on in mid-air," he said. "Although…couldn't be that much harder than peeing, eh?"

Fleur laughed as she pointed her wand towards Hermione's hand and transfigured the pair of knickers into a simple grey cloak. The French witch then threw the cloak over her shoulders and said, "There are many interesting things that you can do on a broomstick…even more when you are sharing it with your lover, no?"

"I'll take your word for it," Harry said.

"You don't have any choice, Mister," Hermione quipped. "At least as long as I'm your girlfriend."

"Maybe when you become his fiancée, then?" Fleur teased.

"I doubt it," said Hermione. She then asked, "So now that we are just inside French jurisdiction, why don't you apparate us the rest of the way?"

"It would cause a big incident," Fleur replied. "Now that they have discovered us…they would be able to follow the apparition trace. Better to calm down their concerns here and now."

"Now it is, then," Harry stated, as he pointed towards the squadron of broomstick-riding gendarmes that was rapidly approaching their position.

The six border patrol agents weren't very happy with them, and did a lot of shouting and gesturing with their outstretched wands. Fleur tried to patiently explain (emphasizing whom she was, and whom her father was), but the gendarmes were skeptical, especially when she was unable to produce a passport (or any other kind of valid identification).

The part-Veela really didn't want to throw her inherited power around, especially now that she was on (or at least close to) home soil. And especially given what had happened the last time she had released her allure. But once they were ordered to turn their broomsticks around and fly back to England, she really didn't have a choice.

It was a testament to their level of magical and mental training that the border patrol agents didn't all fall off their broomsticks once Fleur hit them with a full blast.

"None of you will have a fatal heart attack and all of you will resist the temptation to masturbate," she stated.

The gendarmes all nodded their heads and repeated Fleur's statement.

"_None of us will have a fatal heart attack…"_

"Everything is in order here."

"_Everything is in order here."_

"These are very important people that require a protective escort back to your station."

"_These are very important people…"_

"Bon…allons-y!"

The gendarmes all nodded their heads, and took up a protective diamond-patterned formation around the other two broomsticks.

The entire group began to fly towards the French shoreline at a relatively moderate pace, with Fleur and Harry now flying side-by-side. This allowed Hermione to ask, "So it is that easy to get in, then? No problems once we get to their station?"

Fleur pouted. "I am much more worried about what happened back in England, when I used my allure on Monsieur Diggle."

Hermione shook her head. "There's no proof that you did that, or that what you did caused that, Fleur."

Fleur sighed. "Yes, I know…but still…"

"Is there a law against releasing allure…at least in France?" Hermione asked.

The French witch nodded. "I will be chastised by my parents, and I risk a rather large civil penalty for using allure on public officials, but when compared with the alternative?"

Harry said, "I'll cover whatever fine you have to pay."

Fleur smiled. "Thank you for the offer, but it is only a small risk that I will be fined."

"Because of whom I am?" Harry asked.

"No, because of whom my father is," Fleur replied. She sighed, and added, "It was a lucky thing that all of these agents were male."

Harry cocked his head and expressed his confusion. "Don't you have a female-affecting flavor as well?"

"Yes, but that would have affected Hermione as well," said Fleur. "You are a magnificent flyer, Harry Potter…but could you control your broomstick while your passenger passionately fluffed her muffin?"

Harry thought for a moment, then smiled. "Only one way to find out, right?"

That quip earned the teen-aged wizard a gentle slap on the head from his passenger.

"There will be no testing and no muffin fluffing while we're still two hundred feet above the water," she insisted.

"How about when we're two feet above solid ground, then?" Harry glibly replied.

"Stop it!" Hermione gently chided. She leaned her cheek against her boyfriend's back and let out a deep sigh.

"It's not fair that I'm affected by Fleur's allure, but you aren't."

"Yeah, why is that?" Harry asked. "I mean…you really shouldn't be if your heart belongs to another, right?"

Fleur grinned. "Never doubt that you hold Hermione's heart, Harry!"

The teen-aged wizard snorted. "Four h-words in a row…is this another language lesson?"

"Yes, it is," said Hermione. "And Fleur, you should have told Harry to stay close to your tail, rather than your arse."

"But I do not have a tail," Fleur protested. "At least…not unless I get very, very angry."

"It's a figure of speech," said Hermione.

"No, it is a biology lesson," Fleur replied. "Harry, the allures…they work differently. For the men, their attractions and desires are focused on me. But for the women? The allure gives them intense feelings and urges for the men."

"It's a defensive mechanism, remember?" Hermione added. "It gets unwanted men off of Fleur's back by making nearby women want to get on their backs and spread their legs for the unwanted men."

"So the reaction is opposite," Fleur agreed. "And the reaction is that much more intense for the woman if the man who holds her heart is by her side."

"Ah, I get it!" said Harry. "So is that why Hermione really needed to rub one off in the Burrow's sitting room? Because I was sitting next to her at the kitchen table?"

"Exactement!" Fleur replied.

"Don't let it go to your head, Mister!" Hermione warned.

"How could blood not flow towards that head when I hear how much of an effect I have on you?" Harry teased.

"You're a real berk sometimes, you know?"

"Yes, but you still love me, don't you?"

Hermione gave her boyfriend a squeeze and replied, "I wouldn't have had that screaming sitting room orgasm if I didn't, right?"

"Lucky me!"

"And don't you forget it!"

The three continued on in relatively good humor, their spirits dampened only when they thought of those still left behind in England.

**oo00OO00oo**

_2:35am  
The Burrow_

Bill certainly appreciated the irony as he kept one eye on his mother's clock and the other eye on the stairs leading up to his mother's bedroom. Transfiguring the fake clock's face and swapping out the fake for the original was one of the first things he had done upon returning from the ward line. Prying his mum's clock away from her exposed left breast was going to mentally scar him for the rest of his life, but he (and Fleur and Harry and Hermione) were damned if they were going to let Molly meddle in their private lives…even from a distance.

Switching clocks early had provided Bill with an unplanned bonus; it allowed him to remotely monitor the other's health and progress. There was, of course, no location on the clock marked _France_ (since Molly couldn't conceive of a reason why anyone would want to visit that country). But there was a spot marked _Traveling_, and that's where Harry's and Hermione's hands had come to rest. Fleur's hand was hovering over _Work_, which puzzled Bill until he decided that their primary job as Order of the Phoenix members was to keep Harry safe. And if Fleur was helping Harry stay safe by facilitating his escape, then it made sense that the clock considered her to be at _Work_. This also readily explained why Bill's hand was set over the same spot.

Bill also appreciated the fact that he was hyper focusing on the clock hands even more than his mother would have been (had she been awake). But no sense of shame came with this appreciation…not when so much was at stake. And he loved the poetic justice…the clock that had been modified in order to restrict their freedom was now being used against his mother's wishes in order to facilitate their freedom.

Not knowing Fleur's exact flight plan didn't mean that Bill didn't have a fairly good idea of where she was going, and how long it would take to get there by broomstick. The racing brooms had an easily-maintainable cruising speed of one-hundred miles per hour, and depending on the route it wasn't much more than a hundred and twenty miles to France as the witch or wizard flies. They had left just before one o'clock, which meant that if everything was going well they should be safely back over dry land by now.

The curse-breaker held the clock out from his chest and took yet another look. Nothing had changed…Fleur's, Harry's and Hermione's clock hands were still green, which was good. Fleur and Bill were both still at _Work_, while Harry and Hermione's hands were still _Traveling_.

Something came to mind as the curse-breaker pulled the clock back against his chest. He smiled a rather devious-looking smile, then fished a Brio and notepad out of his pocket.

"One with the lions, or with the snakes?" he whispered to himself…and (apparently) to Crookshanks, who was sitting at his feet.

The part-Kneazle lifted a front paw, extended its claws, and swiped at an imaginary foe.

"Of course, what was I thinking?" Bill asked, as he wrote the words _Lion's Den_ on the notepad.

Crookshanks looked up towards Fleur's fiancé and gave him a cross look when a hearty chuckle escaped from his lips.

"Right, sorry," Bill whispered apologetically. "I was just wondering whether we could get there before breakfast…might be fun to play with their food before they eat it, right?"

Hermione's familiar replied with the feline equivalent of a smile, then rolled over onto its back and stretched his legs.

Bill eyes danced with delight as he hunched down and rubbed Crookshanks' belly.

"Exactly what I was thinking, Old Bean," he said. "You are one smart cat, aren't you?"

"Meow!"

"Oh, sorry…one smart part-kneazle."

"**Meow!"**

"Shush!" Bill whispered, still ducked down on his haunches. "You'll wake the whole house up!"

Crookshanks rolled his eyes, then rolled back onto his paws and butted his head against the back of Molly's clock.

"_**Meow!"**_

"Hey mind the equipment!" Bill hissed, and he quickly stood and held the clock away from Hermione's familiar.

Crookshanks gave Bill a look of exasperation that only a part-cat could give, then turned and started to walk away.

"Well you don't have to get all pissy about it," Bill whined. It was only then that he glanced at his mother's clock and realized what Hermione's familiar had been trying to tell him.

Three clock hands had shifted to a place where no hand had gone before.

On_ Holiday._

It took a minute for the implications to sink into Bill's head.

Harry and Hermione were no longer traveling. They were now at a location (and a state of mind) best associated with the word "holiday". Someplace fun and relaxing…someplace obviously very different than the Burrow.

Fleur was no longer working…she was on holiday as well. And if her "work" had been keeping Harry safe…what did it mean when she no longer needed to work and could go on holiday as well? She no longer needed to keep Harry safe…because he was safe wherever they were right at that moment.

They all had green clock hands and they all were in a safe and relaxing location.

They had made it.

Bell mentally bellowed out a WHOOP! and fist-pumped the air. And did a little dance. And picked up Crookshanks and planted a big fat kiss on the top of his head.

Crookshanks was not amused.

"_Meowwwwwl..."_

"Oh, alright," Bill whispered, letting the part-kneazle jump from his arms.

Fleur's fiancé followed Crookshanks down the stairs to the kitchen. Hermione's familiar crossed to the far side of the kitchen and scratched at the back door.

"Yes, yes…we'll be on our way in a few minutes," Bill said.

"Meow!"

"What?" Bill asked. "Sorry, Old Boy, but I don't speak cat."

"MEOW!"

"Fine, I don't speak part-kneazle either."

"**MEOW!"**

"What, you have to take a dump or something?" Bill asked. "Thought there was a box for that sort of thing."

"**MEOW!"**

"Oh, alright!" Bill hissed, as he opened the back door.

There were a half-dozen cats waiting on the other side. A half-dozen female cats, from the way that Crookshanks jumped over the threshold and began to chase some tail.

After a few seconds of chase (and a successful cover), Crookshanks sauntered back to the doorway and offered Bill a rather defiant-looking glare as the six felines draped themselves on and around the part-kneazle.

"Let me guess…this is your harem?" Bill asked.

Crookshanks nodded his head.

"And I suppose that you're going to put up a fight if I try to stuff you into your box and take you away from them?"

"_**Hisss**_**….**"

It wasn't the reaction that surprised Bill…it was the fact that it was Crookshank's harem that was providing it, and that they were punctuating their reply with extended front claws.

Bill thought for a moment. He still had some unfinished business to complete, and he doubted that Crookshanks would be in a mood to cooperate. He could have stunned the part-kneazle, of course…but feline or not, Crookshanks was a good bloke. And what kind of guy would be cruel enough to separate another bloke from the kind of situation that every bloke dreams about?

"You know that Hermione will miss you, right?" the curse breaker asked.

Crookshanks shrugged. Or at least moved his shoulders in a way that suggested a shrug.

"Right, then, off you go," Bill said.

Crookshanks turned away from the door, and ran out into the night, with his six feline consorts close behind.

As he closed the door, Bill muttered, "I'm probably going to regret that decision."

The real clock was sitting on the kitchen table, right where Bill had set it. He checked the hand positions, then looked towards the time-telling clock that was mounted on the wall. The curse breaker was tempted to put his skills to good use right then and there and make his own enhancements to the magical device. But time was wasting, and he definitely had better places to be at the moment. And revenge was a dish best served cold…cold, and slathered onto a piece of crusty French bread.

The decision made, Bill retrieved his rucksack and dumped his mum's clock into it. He then retrieved his short "TO DO" list and crossed off a task.

The only thing on this list besides _"Box up Crookshanks" _and _"Decide on bloody clock"_ was _"Set up wild hare chase."_ An idea sprung to mind that caused him to walk up to what had been Harry's bedroom. The envelope that contained Harry's tracking-charmed pubic chairs was there, left in a desk drawer. Bill pulled that envelope out of the drawer and dumped its contents onto the desk top.

The curse breaker separated a single hair from the pile and left it under the covers of Harry's bed. He then transfigured a scrap piece of parchment into a second envelope, and divided the pile of pubes into two sub-equal piles. Half went into the original envelope, and half into the new envelope, along with the list of ideas that Harry and Hermione had started working on earlier that evening. Both closed envelopes then went into a trouser pocket. It was more than a little weird to be handing another guy's pubic hairs, but if it was going to help the cause? And maybe teach someone a lesson?

No problem.

Walking back down into the kitchen, Bill took a look around the kitchen. His eyes came to rest on the locked cabinet door where his mum kept her special howler papers. He glanced at the wall clock, and decided that it was worth the time and effort. Forty-five seconds later, Molly's childproof locking charms were breached and the contents of the cabinet were in a new secured location…sitting on top of Molly's clock, inside Bill's rucksack.

It was with more than a little reluctance that Bill made one trip up the stairs, under cover of concealment cloak, and cancelled out the _Somnus_ charms that had been cast on his family members. There was a small risk of discovery, but the red-haired wizard couldn't discount the similarly small risk that there would be a Death Eater attack sometime during the remainder of the night.

Bill grabbed Fleur's rucksack on the way out the back door.

He wasn't at all surprised when Chokebar emerged from the backyard shadows.

"So you're off, then?" the goblin asked.

Bill nodded. "Did you see Hermione's familiar take off earlier?" he asked. "Might want to add cat-watching to your portfolio of client services while we're away."

Chokebar chuckled. "Anything else we can do, then?"

"Diggle?" Bill asked.

"Died earlier this evening in his sleep, in his own bed," Chokebar replied with a smile. "A tragic loss."

Surprised at the goblin's congenial attitude, Bill pressed his luck even further. It took little time for him to explain what he had planned for the pubic hairs, and little time for Chokebar to agree to help with the task. The Curse Breaker handed one of the two envelopes to the account manager. The goblin, in turn, handed Bill a portkey to London. The curse breaker thanked the goblin, and shared the news that Molly's clock had provided. He then promised that he would be in touch with the account manager later that morning, assuming that all continued to go well.

Chokebar shook Bill's hand, then watched his subordinate disappear down the path that led out towards the ward line. He wondered whether the curse breaker trusted him enough to make use of the portkey, then decided that he certainly would not have, had roles been reversed. The goblin then glanced down at the envelope in his hand, and he thought a bit about its contents. Applying tracking charms to his client's body hairs had been a deviously clever idea…an idea that deserved to be trumped by an even more devious response.

A smile formed on Chokebar's lips as that response took form in his head. Being the Potter account manager meant that he was well aware of the product lines offered by Bill Weasley's twin brothers. He had to be, since their shop was one of his client's most promising investments. This level of awareness had included a hands-on review of some of their wheezes, and he still had a few of those wheezes back in his office.

One of these items was a travel guide, titled, "_The Discerning Wizard's Guide to Muggle Britain."_

There was a map inside this guidebook, with all sorts of interesting places highlighted…places unlikely to be marked out by any Muggle cartographer. And some of these places would be excellent places for a wild hare chase.

"_Who would want to live in a place called Cockintake?" _Chokebar thought to himself.

The goblin shrugged, and began sketching out his whirlwind early-hour tour of Muggle Britain.


	13. Chapter 13: Mollywobbled

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N : ** I've been in a manic writing mode before, but this past week has been ridiculous. 17,000 words in a new "chapter" that was barely half-written out beyond my outline. Wondering what the heck I should do now (keep going, cut, or run), I took an unusual step (at least for me) and asked a trusted reader for her opinion. I think she was one of the readers who was really anxious to see Molly get at least some of her just deserts, because she encouraged me to get that scene posted while I work on other parts of the update. So here it is, along with the scenes that follow Bill's journey to freedom, and just enough from the other story threads to let you know that I haven't forgotten about them.

Please don't expect the next "chapter" to be updated as quickly.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 13: Mollywobbled **

_3:00am, July 31  
__Chateau Delacour  
Theoule sur Mer, French Riveria_

A suspicious-sounding sound brought Roger Granger's head up off his pillow very, very quickly. His eyes darted towards the door. He heard another noise…it was definitely coming from the hallway. Hermione's father let out a deep breath, then let out a disappointed sigh.

So much for his daughter's promise.

The Muggle dentist pulled down his side of the bed linens and swung his legs off the bed that he was sharing with his wife. The moonlight filtering through the bedroom suite's windows provided just enough light for him to find his dressing gown and slip it on without bumping into anything. Roger tip-toed silently towards the door and pressed his ear against the wood. He reached for the doorknob, gave it a quiet twist, then cracked opened the bedroom door.

Roger was expecting to either catch his daughter slipping into her boyfriend's bedroom, or catch the boyfriend doing the opposite.

He definitely wasn't expecting to catch Apolline Delacour falling out of her nightgown as she knelt on the hallway floor.

Roger's gasp drew the French witch's attention away from the little girl who had curled-up in front of Harry Potter's bedroom door. Apolline's eyes found Roger's as he stared out the cracked doorway. She smiled, and shook her head as she reached up and casually closed the top of her dressing gown.

"I am so sorry to have awoken you, Monsieur Granger," the part-Veela whispered.

Roger glanced back over his shoulder towards his sleeping wife, then returned his focus on Apolline and her youngest daughter. He thought about slipping all the way out into the hallway, then decided that keeping most of his body hidden behind the door would be a prudent way of dealing with the blood that was rushing towards his todger.

"No problem," he whispered. "I just heard a sound, and…"

"I understand," Apolline replied. She looked back down and tucked the summoned blanket a little more tightly around her daughter. "You know, I could carry her back to her bedroom, but it would be a futile gesture. At least she is sleeping outside her hero's bedroom door, rather than inside, no?"

Roger vigorously nodded his head in agreement.

"My little Gabby," her mother sighed. "I am afraid that her goal in life is to become Monsieur Potter's personal bodyguard...I don't imagine that anyone could gain entrance to his bedroom without a very loud challenge from her."

Again Roger nodded in agreement.

The part-Veela smiled as she bent down to kiss her daughter on the cheek. She then gracefully rose from the hallway floor and nonchalantly tightened her dressing gown sash. She caught Roger's gaze and said, "Again, my apologies. Please remember, Monsieur Granger, that if you need something…if you need anything at all…you merely need ask for it out loud, and one of our house elves will respond."

"erm...Thank you."

"Good night, Monsieur Granger."

"Good night, Madame Delacour."

Roger quietly closed the bedroom door, then leaned back against it and let out a deep breath. He replayed the entire conversation in his head (both the audio and the visuals, of course). Then he glanced down at the tent that had grown beneath his dressing gown sash and shook his head.

Hermione's father wondered what would happen if he gave voice to what he was thinking at that moment. He really needed a cold shower…if he voiced that need out loud would a house elf pop up and dump a bucket of ice water over his head? What if he said out loud that what he really needed was to rub one off?

This was a very disturbing thought (not rubbing one off, but how a house elf might help with that voiced need). But it also turned out to be a productive disturbing thought…something off-putting enough to bring down his tent pole and allow him to safely crawl back into bed with his wife.

His wife. Roger loved his wife. He really did. Loved her enough to resist the allure, but…damn. That resistance didn't make him blind.

Roger leaned over and gave his loving wife a kiss on the cheek.

Emily stirred.

"Something wrong, Roger?" she whispered.

"No, it was nothing, Luv," he whispered.

Roger gave his wife another kiss, then rolled over onto his other side.

The phrase "mental sigh" didn't even begin to describe his levels of frustration and resignation.

On the other side of that bedroom door, the cute little witch curled up in front of Harry Potter's bedroom door smiled in her sleep, and unconsciously congratulated herself for being so useful to her future Alpha (and to the future husband who was currently sharing his bed with her future Alpha).

**oo00OO00oo**

_3:10am, July 31  
Heathrow Airport_

The girl resting her head against a rolled-up sleeping bag had a nose piercing and an eye for things out of place.

"Hey!" she called out across the empty terminal. "Whatcha doin'?"

The tall red-haired man she was yelling at glanced towards in her direction, shrugged, then returned his attention to wall-mounted bank of monitors.

"Just trying to find an airplane ride to France," he said.

That the girl could clearly hear this response with his back turned, and from a distance of more than twenty meters, said far more about how quiet it was within the departure lounge than the girl's hearing abilities.

"You want an airplane ride?" the girl asked incredulously. "What are you, three? Going to take a horsey ride after that?"

Bill turned back towards the backpacker and gave her a second look. The girl was wearing denin cutoff shorts and a gray zippered hooded sweatshirt. Strings of dirty blond hair were slipping out from under a navy blue bandana. She was sitting within a loose perimeter of packs laid out end-to-end, next to three companions who were stretched out inside their sleeping bags.

The curse breaker then took another look up and down the long departure terminal. There were a few more clusters of travelers stretched out on rows of seating, but they were either sleeping or pretending to be asleep. The only other options were an earbud-wearing cleaning employee who was driving a floor buffer machine and a semi-dazed, sleep-deprived man who spoke Polish and Russian. Bill knew a nifty translation spell, but the last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention from the Ministry and its surveillance sensors by using magic in a place where it was very rarely used.

Making a decision, Bill pointed towards the monitors and asked the girl, "Would you be willing to help me make sense of these things?"

The girl stood, stretched out her limbs, and smiled.

"You betcha," she replied.

Bill tried to make sense of this (apparently) affirmative response as the girl stepped over the backpacks and walked towards him.

"I'm Aubrey," she said, holding her hand out.

"Bill," the red-headed wizard replied.

"I love your ear ring," the girl said. "What kind of tooth is that?"

Bill tried not to wince at that question (or at his own stupidity for not pocketing the dragon tooth before entering the Muggle airport). He offered a weak smile and replied, "Egyptian Crocodile."

"Nice," the girl replied. "You've been to Egypt, then?"

Bill shrugged. "Once or twice."

"See the pyramids?"

The tomb-raiding curse breaker chuckled at that question…he'd seen far more of the Gisa complex than just about any modern-day human. Swallowing a few wise-arse retorts, he settled on saying, "Yes I have, although I was mostly there on business."

"What kinda business?"

"I'm an archeologist," Bill lied smoothly.

"Cool!" the girl said. "I'm an art history major myself."

"From the States?" Bill guessed.

"Yeah, how could you tell?" the girl replied. "Suppose it's my accent, which is funny because to me you're the one who has the accent."

Bill replied with a polite nod, as he wondered if every American asked complete strangers this many questions. Aubrey took this as her cue to continue on.

"I flying back home to Chicago," she said. "Well…Chicago isn't actually my home, we're going back to Madison…not that that is home either…certainly not according to the 'rents back in Minnesota, but yeah. Anyhoo, it's way cheaper to fly from O'Hare and take the bus from there to Wisconsin."

"Ah."

"We've been backpacking," Aubrey continued. "Well, actually, we started out on a class trip with my European art history professor, nice guy but way too high-strung…you can drink legally over here when you're eighteen, right? So why should he care? Anyways…so, that was only for a week…did the grand tour of British and Irish art museums, but as long as we're over here, it'd be a crime not to see some more, right? So he flew back all on his own, and all of the students went off in, like, eight different directions. My friends over there and I, we Europass'ed everywhere, which was great not having to worry about buying tickets…Thanks Mom and Dad! But, where was I…oh, yeah. So, saw a lot of cool stuff but now we're broke…not enough money to bunk in a hostel…and I'll be eating Ramen for, like, the next six months…but it was so worth it, right?"

"It certainly seems that way," Bill agreed, wondering if the American girl ever needed to breathe. "You always this wide awake at three in the morning?"

Aubrey shook her head. "Spent my last eurobucks on three Red Bulls and a litre of pop. Have to pee every half-hour, but it's worth it."

I…see," Bill said (although he really did not…the reference to purchasing colored cows being particularly confusing). Trying to wrestle back control of the conversation, he pointed towards the monitors and asked, "So these screens…I'm looking for the first flight to France."

The American girl gave Bill a funny look. "You take business trips to Egypt, but you can't figure out a departure schedule on your own? That's weird."

Bill sighed. "Erm…my employer usually makes all of my travel arrangements."

"Your employer?" Aubrey asked. "Huh…figured you to be a grad student. What kind of company hires archeologists?"

"A very private kind of company," Bill said curtly.

"Oh…kay. So you want to go to France?" Aubrey asked. She looked up at the departures screen and said, "First plane to Paris is an Air France flight. Leaves at 6:40."

Bill resisted the immediate urge to whip out his wand and cast a _Tempus_ spell. He instead looked at his Muggle wristwatch and said, "That's more than three hours from now?"

Aubrey shrugged. "It's not bad…our flight doesn't leave until nine, and the first plane going anywhere doesn't leave until six."

"And that's the only option?"

The American girl looked back up at the screens. "There's a couple of British Airways flights, but they don't leave until later in the day."

Bill looked at the screen again and muttered. "Three hours…damn it!"

"What's the rush?"

"My fiancée is waiting for me on the other side of the channel."

"She pregnant and in labor, or something?"

"What?"

"Just trying to figure out why you're so anxious to get there."

Bill thought for a moment, then reached into his pocket, removed his billfold and flipped it open to a wallet-sized photograph of Fleur.

"Whoa…enough said," the girl said. "I'm not into girls, but…if she was waiting for me? You're a lucky man, Bill."

"Erm…thanks," the wizard replied. He glanced back at the screens and asked, "Isn't there a train now that goes to France through a really long tunnel?"

"Yeah, it's called the Chunnel," said Amanda. "Funny thing though…it's only Americans who call it that. But why am I telling you this…are you Australian or something?"

Bill chuckled, and shook his head. "No, I'm English. I just spend a lot of time in the desert."

"Oh."

"Do you know which London station this Chunnel train leaves from?" Bill asked.

The girl's eyes lit up. "Yeah it was Saint something."

"St. Pancreas?"

"Bingo!" the girl replied.

"You wouldn't happen to know when the first train leaves that station, would you?" Bill asked.

Aubrey reached out and grabbed Bill's elbow. "Oh…wait. Hold on!" she said.

Bill watched as the American girl scampered back to her group and unzipped a pocket on her backpack. One of her companions let out a moan and complained about the noise, prompting Aubrey to launch into a mini-lecture about Minnesota-nice and "paying it forward." It was almost enough to stop Bill from reaching into his pocket and (once his back was turned) retrieving a single strand of tracking-charmed hair.

Almost, but not quite enough (points gained for offering assistance having been more than lost by the girl's long-windedness).

Aubrey walked back to Bill with a dog-eared, broken-spine'd rail timetable in hand.

"Let's look in the Bible," she said, as she flipped open the book. "Well, it's not really the Bible, but you knew that, didn't you…even with all that time you spend in the desert doing your digging, right?"

"Right," Bill agreed.

"'Kay, so…we got to Paris from here on an Eurostar evening train, after we ditched our professor, but you want something earlier with that gorgeous girlfriend of yours on the other…erm, sorry, you said fiancée, right?"

"Right."

"Lucky girl…well then, Eurostar…Eurostar…Euro…here we are. Looks like first train to Paris leaves at 5:40."

"That's a little better, I guess," Bill reasoned.

"Except I don't think you could get from here to St. Whatever in time, 'cause your Underground needs its beauty sleep and doesn't run at night…not like Chicago. Those el's run all night…although it might not be safest thing in the world to do, you know? So that's why I had voted for crashing at the tube station and catching first subway train out here in the morning, so we could have stayed out all night in Jolly Ole' Londontown, 'cept we didn't have any money left to do much of anything anyways, so…there you go."

Bill nodded. "It really does seem strange…to spend all that money on underground trains and tunnels to France but not use them around the clock."

"Oh, they get used…at least the Chunnel ones, I think," Aubrey replied. "They've got these cool car carriers…you drive off the highway, drive right onto a train car, and they carry you over to the other side, and Bob's your uncle, there you are in France. Drive off the train and you're back on the road, except only you'd have to remember to drive on the right side of the road, instead of the left. Did you know one of my classmates almost killed herself walking out onto a street in Edinburgh?"

"No, I didn't," said Bill. "So these car carriers, they run all night long?"

"Think so," the girl replied. "Saw one loading up as we flew by at a gazillion miles per hour…that's 1.6 gazillon kilometers per hour to you, by the way…the tunnel entrance on this side is in some place called…Folk-rocks, or Folkes - stone… but it's just for cars and trucks, mind you…hah! Hear that? I used _'mind you'_ just like I was English, instead of being French and sayin' '_n'est pas,'_ or saying _'don't you know'_ like we do back home…home-home in Minnesota, that is…although I guess there's a few 'Sconnie's that say that too..."

"So, I need to go to Folkestone," Bill summarized, as he glanced once more at his wristwatch. He could always apparate there and back if the story didn't pan out. And if this shuttle only went as far as the French coastline, then he could apparate while standing still in Calais, rather than try to apparate from a moving train (or wait until the train or plane arrived in Paris).

"If you really think so," Aubrey replied. "Can't see how you could get to the coast in the middle of the night sooner than either flying or taking the train from London."

"Well, we'll see, I guess," Bill replied. He reached out to shake the American's hand, pulling her close enough to pat her on the back and slip a pubic hair into the hood of her sweatshirt.

"Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it," he said.

"Sure, no problema," Aubrey replied. "Say, you got an e-mail address? I'd love to hear how you finally end up getting to see your fiancée."

"Sorry, I don't," Bill replied. "Don't really use computers out in the desert."

"Ah, that's too bad," the American said. "Cheerio, then?"

Bill chuckled, and nodded his head. "Cheerio, Aubrey."

**oo00OO00oo**

_3:30am  
Gringott's Wizarding Bank_

Chokebar's plans to distribute tracking-charmed pubic hairs to the four corners of Magical Britain were being seriously delayed by the stack of reporting forms that sat on top of his office desk. Justifications were required for every snap decision that he had made and for every action that he had taken (or not taken) that night. And the forms that he was filling out weren't going just to his immediate supervisor…the Board of Auditors was being copied on each document placed with the Potter Account Manager's out basket. And this provided even more incentive to be very meticulous as he completed each form, since he wasn't at all interested in having to defend himself in person before the Board.

By Chokebar's estimation, it would take at least two more hours to complete the paperwork already before him, and that estimate was making the envelope filled with his client's pubic hairs rest very uncomfortably in his vest pocket. The longer it took to get out of his office an into the cart network, the more likely it was that his client's gambit would be found out by either the white-haired manipulator or the red-haired harridan. And Chokebar didn't even want to think about how many forms would be needed document what would happen if those hairs were tracked down to his present location.

It was clear to Chokebar that someone else would have to help him set up the Wild Hare Chase. But who? The only person he trusted implicitly was Malice, his secretary, but she had limited experience top-side, and would be hard-pressed to quickly and efficiently travel across Britain. He had subordinates that could be tasked with the job, but they had barely more experience than his secretary operating within the human world. Chokebar has briefly considered calling in one of the Potter house elves not presently under contract…but most of those worked on an ad hoc basis at Hogwarts. So what to do? The answer came to Chokebar when he remembered that there was an independent house elf option…someone who had been pestering him about becoming a House Potter house elf for the last three years.

The senior account manager rose from his desk, walked over to his file cabinet, and began to flip through tabbed folders linked to the various Potter account files. Once he found the one marked "house elf management" he pulled it from the drawer and opened the file cover.

The handwritten servitude application that Chokebar was looking for was at the top of the stack of papers. At the bottom of this application was an ink-smudged circle. Two seconds after the goblin pressed his thumb against this circle, a very excited house elf popped onto the office.

"Is Dobby's applications for being the Great Harry Potter's Sir's house elf forever and ever being accepted?" the bouncy little creature asked.

Chokebar smiled, but shook his head.

"I am sorry, Dobby, not at the moment," he said. "I am working very hard to make it possible for you to ask my client that question yourself."

"Really? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Harry Potter Sir's Goblin!"

Chokebar pushed down his natural inclination to reach for his steel-spiked mace as the excitable house elf invaded his personal space. Pulling Dobby clear of the leg that was presently being humped, the goblin asked, "You know that Albus Dumbledore would try to block your attempt to become part of House Potter, and that Molly Weasley would never allow you to serve my client while he is staying under her roof, right?"

"Yes, Mr. Accounty Manager, Sir! Dobby be knowing how nasty Ole Whiskers and the nastier Miss Nosy Bitch be keeping Dobby from helping the Great Harry Potter Sir!"

"Well, if you can keep a secret…."

"Dobby be keeping secret about anythings be helping him to be a Potter elf!"

"Well then, Dobby…the secret is that my client has run away from Miss Nosy Bitch's house."

"Really! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"

Chokebar took a moment to stop Dobby from literally bouncing off the stone-hewn walls. Once he had a firm grip on the house elf's shoulder, the goblin said, "I think that Harry Potter is in a safe place now. But Dumbledore and the Nosy Bitch are going to try to find him and drag him back to the Burrow."

"What can Dobby be doing to help Accounty Manager Sir in stopping them?"

"I'm glad that you asked, Dobby," Chokebar replied. "I'd rather see Dumbledore chasing his own tail, than chasing Harry Potter." The goblin then reached into his vest pocket, and pulled an envelope and a travel map.

**oo00OO00oo**

_3:45am  
Folkestone Eurotunnel Terminal  
Folkestone, Kent_

The lorry driver let out a deep sigh as he pulled up to the end of the queue waiting to enter the freight terminal. He'd been twenty minutes late leaving the cheese distributor thanks to the loaders, and the biweekly drive from Wellington had taken fifteen minutes longer than normal due to road construction. Still, nothing to be done about it…even if the delays caused him to miss his normal shuttle train connection and make his arrival in Brussels even more delayed.

The driver was in the middle of pouring a cup of tea from his Thermos when the passenger side cab door opened and a man dressed in black climbed inside.

"Jeee-sus! What the bloody hell you think you're doing!" the driver shouted.

The passenger held one hand out as he used his other hand to close the door.

"Sorry for the intrusion, just need a couple of minutes of your time."

"Well you can't bloody 'ave it! Get the fuuk outta my cab!"

The unwelcome arrival pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and peeled off a 100 euro note.

"This is just for you to listen to my offer," he said. "No other obligations…two minutes from now you can tell me to fuck off and I'll gladly leave."

The driver's eyes shifted back and forth between the single bill now sitting on the front dash and the wad of bills still in the other guy's hand. He stuck his head out the window and counted out his place in line.

"Two minutes is all you'll have, mate," he said, reaching out to pull the euro note into his pocket.

"Thanks, my name's Bill, by the way," the other man said, holding out his hand.

"Steve," the driver said cautiously, as he shook the wizard's hand.

"Nice to meet you, Steve," said Bill. "So the proposal is a simple one…you help me get to the other side, and there's another three hundred in it for you."

"Three hundred?" the driver asked incredulously. "You're willing to pay that much just to hitch a ride?"

"Yes, Sir."

"What the fuck for?" the driver asked. "You can take the bloody ferry from Dover for a hundred."

Bill shrugged. "I'm in a hurry."

The driver asked, "You aren't runnin' from the coppers, are you?"

"No, Sir."

"Not trying to enter illegally?"

Bill pulled his Muggle British passport out of his pocket and shook his head.

"I'm a legal U.K. citizen, and if I'm wanted by the authorities, then surely they'll find me out when we go through passport control, right?"

"Bah!" the driver scoffed. "They hardly ever bother to even make me roll the window down as I roll by. But if you think it wouldn't be on my head if I was giving a lift to a wanted criminal?"

"But I'm not wanted, so it's not an issue," Bill declared.

The driver pursed his lips.

"So why are you in such a hurry, then?" he asked.

Bill thought for a moment, then pulled out his billfold. This time, he pulled the picture of Fleur out of its protective cover, and handed it to the driver.

"That's my fiancée," he explained. "She's waiting for me on the other side."

The driver's eyes glazed over, and his hands began to shake, as if Fleur's allure was somehow escaping from the Muggle photograph itself. He let out a low-pitched whistle, and shook his head.

"Should've started your sales pitch with the picture," he told Bill, returning the photo. "Would have saved you some money."

The two sat in the silent cab for another minute, as it slowly rolled towards the front of the queue. Once it was his turn to drive up to a touch-screen terminal, the driver rolled down his window and pressed a couple of buttons…the most relevant being the number of passengers traveling in the cab.

"Gonna owe my mate in the front office after this," Steve said.

"Why's that?"

"Cause all this data is going directly back to the company…they take a dim view of their drivers taking on hitchhikers."

"So you'll get in trouble, then?"

"Nah, like I said…I've got a mate that works in the office that will take care of things," the driver said. "Still…."

"Yes?"

"Might be easier explaining things if I had that picture of yours to show."

Bill let out a snort as he handed the picture back to the driver.

"We have a deal, then?"

The driver reached his hand out.

"If anyone asks, you're the new guy learning my route."

Bill nodded, and shook the driver's hand.

The light in front of the truck turned from red to green, and they began to move again.

"That's it, then?"

"Yeah, as far as payment and registration goes," the driver explained. "Next it's our customs and immigration guys, who'll wave us right through…just like this…."

Bill nodded as an overweight agent who was wearing an orange reflective vest and carrying a clipboard waved the truck through.

"Very nice," the driver said. "Next it's the Frenchies' turn."

"What's that?" Bill asked.

The driver turned towards Bill and said, "The French do their immigration control and customs inspections on this side of the tunnel, just like our guys do their work on the other side…is that a problem?"

"No, no…just didn't realize," said Bill.

"No worries mate," the driver said. "The French are ten times lazier than the Brits. Most of the time, they don't even bother coming out of their shed as we roll…right by…bugger!"

The driver stopped the lorry twenty feet short of the two French immigration control officials who had popped out of their little building and waved a hand-held stop sign.

"That was a real passport, right mate?" the driver asked.

"Yes, it is," Bill insisted.

"Right, stay calm, then," the driver said, as he rolled down his window. "Probably just going to check the back for stowaways."

This assessment appeared fairly accurate…at least as first. As one official asked for the driver and passenger to produce their passports, the other official, who carried a small box from a shoulder strap, inserted a small probe into the refrigerated trailer.

The first official flashed his torchlight on first the driver's passport, and then Bill's. When he spotted the name on Bill's passport, the agent did a double take. He then pulled himself up the driver's side door, and flashed his torchlight in Bill's face. After a comparison between face and photo was made, the agent returned the two passports.

"Just a moment, please," he said.

The over-sized windows in the immigration control office allowed Bill and the lorry driver to watch as the French agent placed a call. There was a brief conversation with someone on the other side of the line that involved three head nods and two glances at Bill's passport. The call ended when the officer gave the telephone receiver one very sharp salute.

"Sorry about all this," Bill told the driver, as the French official walked back towards the lorry.

"Maybe it would help if we showed the Frenchie that picture of your girl?" the driver asked.

Bill was considering this idea as the immigration officer gestured for him to roll down the passenger-side window.

"My apologies, Monsieur Weasley, but if you would follow me? There is someone who wishes to talk with you."

The deferential tone of voice prompted Bill to go with the flow and open the cab door.

The driver grabbed his sleeve and held out Fleur's picture.

"Couldn't hurt, mate," he said.

The French officer smiled at the driver. "Please do not be concerned…I give you my personal assurance that Monsieur Weasley will be joining you in the club car."

Bill turned towards the driver and shrugged.

"Guess you should hold onto the picture as collateral," he said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah…if need be I've got a couple of more photos in my wallet that would work even better."

The driver looked once more at the head shot of Fleur and shook his head in disbelief.

"How could you improve on perfection?" he asked.

Bill grinned as he stepped down from the cab, then looked back towards the driver and replied, "By dressing perfection in a swim costume!"

Heart medication hastily retrieved from the lorry's glove box was the only thing that kept Bill from causing a second fatal heart attack that night.

**oo00OO00oo**

One-hundred forty-two miles west of the Folkestone Terminal (as the naked witch flies), a house elf was comparing his checklist against a street sign. Pleased to have reached one of his destinations, Dobby pulled out one of Harry's tracking-charmed pubic hairs, and began searching for just the right place to hide it within the sleepy little hamlet of Shitterton.

**oo00OO00oo**

Bill thought it unlikely that anyone magical would be eavesdropping on the telephone call. But as he was still on the English side of the Eurotunnel, he didn't take any chances, and he didn't say anything too revealing (or too racy) during that conversation. After an "à bientôt" and one final "Je t'aime," the curse breaker handed the telephone receiver to the immigration officer. The officer nodded curtly and clicked his heels together as he placed the receiver back onto its cradle.

"Monsieur Weasley, someone will be waiting for you in Coquelles," he said. "But if there is something that we might do for you on this side that would facilitate your travel? Anything at all?"

Bill acknowledged the offer with a warm smile. "So was there any specific reason why you stopped the lorry that I was riding in?"

The official nodded. "There is a special kind of sensor that each vehicle rolls across. It is very rarely tripped, but in these instances we are instructed to stop the vehicle, determine who is inside, and report this information to someone back in Paris."

"Ah, that makes sense," said Bill. It sounded as if there was a magic-detection ward line in place, and that the person on the other end of the telephone call was in the know about magic. But since it was clear that this agent wasn't in the know, he didn't explain why the comment made sense.

A different lorry rolled passed the guard shack, prompting Bill to think of a different question. "So, how many lorries are going to be on this shuttle?"

"Thirty-two total, Monsieur."

"And is there any way of knowing their final destinations?"

The French Muggle nodded, and said, "But of course!"

He typed something on his computer keyboard. A few seconds later, a piece of paper spat out of the beige box that sat behind the metal desk. The French official grabbed this sheet and offered it to Bill.

"This is a list that matches vehicle license plate numbers against their destinations," he said.

Bill took the paper and quickly scanned its contents. He liked what he saw…after planting pubic hairs on Annoying Aubrey and eighteen other air travelers at Heathrow, he still had roughly twenty tracking charms left in his envelope.

"Is there any way that I can gain access to these lorries?" he asked.

"You wish to obtain access inside each trailer?"

"No…I just want to walk alongside them…to put my hand on each one."

"Ah…that can be easily arranged," the agent replied. "Is there anything else that I might do for you?"

Bill's eyes drifted over towards a side table, where a box of freshly-baked (and just-delivered) croissants and French pastries sat next to a coffee maker.

"Well, if it's not too much to ask….."

**oo00OO00oo**

Halfway down his checklist, Dobby popped up in the Welsh village of Pontarddulais. This time, he was looking for a specific street within a specific village, for reasons that the house elf didn't really understand. But anything to help the Great Harry Potter, Sir…right?

Most of the houses in this village had slate roofs, which would make it harder to hide a hair than it was within the thatched roofs in Shitterton. Not that Dobby was interested in being repetitive, or in making things easy for anyone trying to track down a hair. He wanted hiding places that would make Ole Whiskers and Miss Nosy Bitch think twice before they played with the Great Harry Potter Sir's privates.

Once he found what he was looking for, Dobby popped back and forth, until he found just the right place to leave a hair…on top of one of the poles that supported high-voltage power lines down the length of Pant-y-Felin Road.

**oo00OO00oo**

Bill used spell-o-tape to fix the last tracking-charmed hair in his envelope to the undercarriage of an Istanbul-bound lorry. He climbed back onto to the platform, where a shuttle bus was waiting to deliver him to the passenger car at the head of the train. Bill was going to wave the driver off and walk the short distance, but then he spotted the white boxes and insulated carafes sitting next to the bus driver. So he stepped aboard, and after a very short trip, helped the driver carry three boxes of pastries, five litres of fresh-brewed tea, and ten litres of fresh-brewed coffee into the club car.

By this point in time, Bill was already the most popular guy on the train; Steve the cheese truck driver had seen to that by allowing all of the other lorry drivers to take a look at Fleur's picture. The pastries and coffee that he shared with everyone in the club car merely cemented that position.

It took thirty five minutes to journey the thirty-one miles from Folkestone to the French terminal at Coquelles. Half-way through that trip, one of the nineteen taped hairs was sucked out of the open sides of a shuttle car and was left behind within the tunnel. Bill didn't find out about this until a few days later, when Fred and George regaled their older brother with a hilarious story about Severus Snape's Soggy Visit to the Bottom of the Sea.

While sunrise was still an hour away, there was more than enough early-morning twilight to define the moment that the shuttle train emerged from the Eurotunnel and rolled onto at-grade track. The lorry drivers (no strangers to this transition) marked the occasion by using the loo and finishing off the last of the pain au chocolat. But Bill's focus was the scenery outside of the car's windows…and, specifically, the oversized Tricolour that flew 24/7 over the main terminal building. The wide smile that formed on the curse breaker's lips lasted through all of the handshakes, and well-wishes, and futile requests to see the picture of Fleur in a bikini.

When the train came to a stop, the club car's doors opened with a _whoosh_, and the drivers filed out onto the platform. A shuttle bus was waiting to reunite them with their rigs, and a half-dozen terminal personnel were preparing to guide the small convoy off of the train cars and back onto the road. But there was another man waiting on the platform…someone who was not a Eurotunnel employee (based on the lack of reflective striping attached to his expensive three-piece suit). This man was quick to pull Bill to the side.

Kisses were offered on each cheek as Bill was welcomed to France. This confirmed the well-dressed man's nationality.

A government id was shown that included a magically-animated head-shot. This confirmed both the well-dressed man's employer and his magical status.

Bill was led off the platform and behind a building, where the well-dressed man placed a portkey in his hand and stated that it was set to deliver him to "Le Cogfir Inn." This confirmed that the well-dressed man was completely trustworthy.

Too excited to crack a joke about only wanting to visit The Cogfir Inn with his fiancée, Bill took hold of the offered gold chain and disappeared within a rainbow spray of colors.

**oo00OO00oo**

There were two more hairs than places on Dobby's checklist. So once he visited every place on that list, he decided to show just how loyal and worthy he would be as a Potter House Elf by taking some initiative.

Dobby really, really needed to find a great hiding spot for a tracking-charmed hair. And where do you go when you really, really need something the most?

The excitable house elf popped to Hogwarts, and walked back and forth three times in front of the Come and Go Room.

Dobby could have found hiding spots for both hairs in the cluttered storage room, but something that Chokebar had said earlier that evening was stuck in the back of his mind. The senior account manager had told Dobby that he wanted Dumbledore to be chasing his own tail. Now this was a silly thing to ask for, since every house elf who had ever worked at Hogwarts knew that the Headmaster's tail had been surgically removed decades ago. So what was the next best thing?

After a brilliant idea popped into the house elf's head, the house elf quietly popped into Dumbledore's private quarters. Once there, he surreptitiously wove the very last pubic hair into the fabric of the boxer shorts that had been set out as part of the Headmaster's next-day outfit.

**o00OO00oo**

_6:30am, July 31  
The flat above Weasley's Wizard Wheezes_

Fred Weasley's randy early morning dream involving girlfriends, canary creams, and oversized nests was interrupted by an unwelcomed shake of the shoulder. He turned away from the contact, pulled the blanket over his head, and muttered, "Awww, Mum give it a rest…we're just nesting…"

The witch who was standing at his bedside yanked the blanket back and said, "This bloody owl is going to make a nest in our bed unless you wake up, Luv."

"Luv?" Fred asked, as the cobwebs rapidly cleared. He opened his eyes, glanced up towards his employee/girlfriend, then glanced back over his shoulder in the direction she was now pointing.

"He won't let me take the message off of his leg," the witch noted.

Fred nodded in understanding, letting out a yawn as his eyes shifted away from the perched post owl towards the opened bedroom window. Reaching underneath his pillow for his wand, he turned towards the delivery bird and asked, "What has you being all insistent, like?"

"I've already checked it for curses, his girlfriend noted.

"Just to be safe," said Fred, as he sat up and cast a proprietary prank detection spell that also served as an effective mail screen. The red-haired wizard liberated the envelope from the owl's leg only after the document passed this safety test.

Verity (the younger of the Weasley Twins's two live-in employees) tracked the post owl as it launched off the head board and glided out the opened bedroom window. Her attention was brought back towards the bed when Fred pumped his fist and shouted, "Yes!"

"Hush," the witch whispered. "George and Chastity are probably still sleeping."

The smile on Fred Weasley's face didn't falter as he looked up from the slip of parchment and said, "They'll want to be woken to hear this news."

"What's that?" Verity asked.

Fred handed her the letter, then swung his legs off their bed and stood.

"They've all four successfully flown the coop," the wizard announced.

His girlfriend looked down at the cryptic message and read it out loud.

"_I solemnly swear that the co-owner and le coq disent, 'Cock-a-diddle-do'_?" she asked. "How do you figure that from this?"

"Easy," said Fred, as he pulled on a pair of trousers. "We nicknamed our brother 'Le Coq' after he bagged a French bird, and Harry is our co-owner. _Disent_ is French, so that means Fleur got away clean, and the diddle-do part can only refer to Hermione."

"Oh…well, good for them, then," said Verity.

Fred frowned when he recognized disappointment within his girlfriend's tone of voice. "Something wrong, Sweetheart?"

Verity smiled and shook her head as she dragged a finger down the front of her night gown.

"No, no," she insisted. "Just a little disappointed that it wasn't another message like last night's."

Fred's eyes bulged out a bit as he followed Verity's finger.

"Oh, sorry…did I fail to mention that _'I solemnly swear'_ is code for 'You need to do some more fornicating this morning'?"

Verity smiled as she toyed with the strings that tied her nightgown shut. "How long this time?"

Her boyfriend quickly cast a _Tempus _charm.

"Well what do you know? Two hours of fornicating, beginning in exactly two minutes."

"So why are you getting dressed, then?" Verity asked, as her fingers loosened the knot that held her nightgown shut.

As he watched his insatiable live-in girlfriend/employee rush to get naked, Fred Weasley once again silently thanked Merlin, Morgana, and the teen-aged co-owner whose investment allowed his brother and him to rent a flat and make their own escape from their mother's overbearing oversight.

A knock on the door drew the red-haired wizard's attention away from his lover's body.

"Go away! Nobody's home!" he called out.

Verity giggled as she held the nightgown that she'd just pulled over her head against her chest. "Shouldn't we tell our siblings that they need to be fornicating as well?"

"I suppose they _should_ hear the good news," Fred reasoned.

"And also hear about the successful escape," his girlfriend purred seductively.

Fred dashed towards the bedroom door and opened it just a crack.

"Good morning…just got word that they all got away safe and we need to shag for two more hours starting right about now!" he loudly declared.

A laugh came from the hallway as Verity's older sister pushed her way into the bedroom. "Don't think I'd survive another two hour marathon after last night," Chastity declared. The witch glanced towards her half-naked sister and shook her head. "We got the same message…minus the need to shag part."

Fred's girlfriend shrugged her shoulders. "Oh well, guess that means that you two get to open the shop this morning."

"Nice try, Sis," said Chastity. She turned to Fred and added, "George is getting dressed and sent me to make sure that you're doing the same. He's expecting you both to be summoned either by your mum or by Dumbledore. Probably both."

Fred let out a deep breath, shook his head, and began to think about where he had left his howler-cancelling headphones.

**oo00OO00oo**

_6:45am  
The Burrow _

The painful itch that woke up Molly Weasley was so intense that she almost dropped the clock and grabbed her crotch with both hands.

"Yeeeeaaaaah!"

Arthur immediately woke, and in a flash had the lights on and the tip of his wand pointing towards his wife's bed.

"What's wrong?" he shouted.

"Ermm….nothing," Molly hissed through clenched teeth, as she turned away from her husband and curled into a fetal position.

"That doesn't sound like nothing."

"Just a bit of an issue _down there_."

"Ah…is there anything I can do to help?"

"NO!" Molly spat. "Nothing for you to worry about. Go back to bed."

Arthur glanced at the magical alarm clock. He shook his head, stepped onto the carpeted floor and said, "It's just about time to get up…might as well take a shower."

"Good idea," Molly hissed.

"Are you certain there isn't something that I could do to help?"

Molly shook her head. The head shaking was much more insistent when Arthur asked if she wanted him to keep the door to the attached lavatory opened, just in case.

The Weasley matriarch had barely enough willpower to cast locking charms on the doors leading to the lavatory and hallway. Only then did Molly pull down the bed linens and pull up the hem of her nightgown. What she saw _down there_ added thick layers of fear and loathing to the pain…someone replaced her unruly, untrimmed fanny forest with a mixture of angry pus-filled pimples and nasty ingrown hairs.

Molly was going to go Medieval on whoever had cursed her quim.

And this intent to go Medieval led her to reach for her clock; by her logic, the hand that was turning color in response to the "imminent harm" that she was about to inflict would point her directly towards the culprit. But to her great surprise, all of the hands on the clock were colored green, and sat just where she'd expect them to be.

Thinking that pain relief should come before pain deliverance, Molly set the clock down and hobbled towards a wall-mounted mirror (wand in one hand, raised hemline in the other). She levitated the mirror onto the bedroom floor and squatted over it.

The fanny reflection looked just as bad as it felt.

As her youngest son had noted earlier that summer, Molly Weasley was an accomplished amateur healer. Her skills in diagnosing, treating, and reversing all but the most challenging ills and magical maladies were a reflection of her fierce self-reliance, her family's limited finances, and her fertility (there having been far less need for healing and prank-reversing before her fourth and fifth sons came along). But she had never had to deal with in-grown hairs before; the men in her house shaved daily, while the women in her house never shaved (at least not the ones who would trust Molly with their medical care).

The Weasley matriarch kept home-brewed salves on hand to effectively and magically deal with irritating skin blemishes and rashes. But she figured that she would have to really lay it on thick this time, and would have to leave it on _down there_ for a while. And that salve would hide the ingrown hairs and delay their removal. So it was hair removal first, salve application second.

The course of treatment determined, Molly aimed her wand towards her crotch and cast a hair-removal jinx.

It was an unfortunate choice of magic.

In the midst of her pain (and her plans for punishment) Molly had forgotten some of the most basic principles of magic. There were two basic ways for a witch or wizard to remove hair. Both the shaving charm that Arthur was using in the shower and the depilatory charm that Hermione had used on Harry were spells designed for beneficial effect; the intent of the spells was to remove unwanted hair. On the other hand, the hair-loss jinx that Molly had just used on herself was designed for ill effect…the intent of the jinx was to inflict harm and/or embarrassment on the target by removing hair that was wanted, rather than unwanted.

Molly Weasley knew how to cast a hair-loss jinx. She'd used the spell when she was still a Prewitt, and had seen it thrown around her house more than a few times once she became a mother. So while the correctly cast self-inflicted jinx didn't therapeutically vanish her ingrown pubic hairs, it did a bang-up job of shaving her head bald and causing her eyebrows and eyelashes to fall off.

"Yeeeeaaaaah!"

Arthur heard his wife's wails and jumped out of the shower. Discovering that the door to the bedroom was locked, he banged on it with his fist and yelled, "Molly? Are you alright? Open the door!"

"I'm fine!"

"You don't sound fine."

"Well I am, so leave me be!"

Arthur took a deep breath, counted to ten, then let the breath out and stepped back into the shower.

Back on the other side of the door, Molly was tearfully considering her next steps. The standard counter-treatment for the hair loss jinx was a proprietary hair restoration potion from Sleakeasy's. Not that the potions that she used came from Sleakeasy's, or that she paid any mind to the fact that it was a proprietary product; the pirated instructions that she used to brew her own version of the potion worked well enough, thank you very much.

Bald Molly hobbled over to her nightstand and cast an unlocking charm that opened the hidden drawer where she stored all of her "special" potions (i.e. anything someone might consider to be illegal or improper). She had to pull the drawer almost all of the way out to reach the bottle that had been pushed to the back by more recently-brewed love potions. The bottle stopper pulled, Molly guzzled the foul-tasting potion down.

In the midst of her pain (and her plans for punishment) Bald Molly had just forgotten another important magical principal. The hair restorative belonged to a broad class of magical potions that were developed to return a patient to a normally healthy state. It didn't go overboard and grow scalp hair out to Rapunzellian-lengths, or allow a wizard to challenge Albus Dumbledore in a longest beard competition. What it did do is generally restore a witch or wizard's hair to the lengths that existed before the catastrophic hair loss event. So when Molly drank the potion, she was able to regrow normal-looking eyebrows and eyelashes, and regain the same length and style of scalp hair that she'd enjoyed the day before.

The problem was that the potion worked on all types of hair.

When Fleur told Harry and Hermione that she had numbed Molly's privates and permanently jinxed Molly's pubic hairs to become ingrown, she had left out a critical step. The "normal" time for ingrown hairs to develop was right after a close shave. But Molly never shaved (at least not _down there_) and Fleur wasn't certain that her curse would work on an untamed forest. So, when Fleur slipped into Arthur and Molly's bedroom the night before, she cut down Molly's forest _before_ she cast the jinx that forced the remaining stubble to grow inward.

If Molly hadn't realized that her ingrown pubic hairs were only a quarter-inch long before she drank that potion, she surely figured it out afterwards, when the potion added three inches to the length of each and every pubic hair.

Three additional inches _inward_.

"Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Arthur didn't stop to call out to his wife, and didn't bother with unlocking charms. This time, when he heard Molly cry in pain, he simply vanished the door and rushed towards his wife, who was curled up on the floor with her nightgown bunched up above her waist.

His position at the Ministry and his experiences as a father had given Arthur Weasley his own level of competence when it came to providing emergency first aid. While he didn't know the underlying cause of Molly's suffering, he was easily able to diagnose acute symptoms from the visual evidence and from the few words that she was able to get out in between sobs.

Arthur waved his wand and used the same numbing charm that Fleur had used the night before to eliminate most of the pain. He then cast the same _Somnus_ spell that Bill had used to put his wife into a light (if uncomfortable) sleep. The goal of this sleep spell wasn't to manage pain…it was to manage the embarrassment that Molly would have experienced when her husband rolled her onto her back and spread her legs to gain a better (and far closer) view of where it hurt.

The same spell that Arthur had just used to shave his chin was then used to remove the ingrown hairs from his wife's crotch. It was a messy process, as the hairs growing underneath each pus-filled pimple burst those puss-filled pimples on the way out.

It was also, to Arthur's disappointment, a seemingly futile process; the hairs that he had just removed were almost immediately replaced by new hairs that grew out before they grew inward. It didn't take long for him to reason out why…the hair restoring potion that his wife had swallowed was still in her system, and that potion would continue to catalyze new hair growth until it was completely _out_ of her system.

The Weasley patriarch realized that the start of that process would be way messier than the bursting fanny pimples. It was also going to be far more time intensive, and require a bit of planning and proper staging. Of course, the safest and easiest course of action would be bringing Molly to St. Mungo's, but that wasn't the most secure location, and she would have fits if he brought her there and left the children behind (even with the wards, and guards, and Bill and Fleur on hand). So a messy home treatment it was…so long as the problem didn't seem life threatening.

He started with the paralysis charm that would buy him most of that time. The spell froze Molly's muscle movement and shut down all but the most critical organ functions. Skin is an organ, and hair growth isn't a critical core function, so the spell stopped the ingrowth. But it also stopped digestion and liver functions, so it wasn't a long term solution.

A quick check of the family clock showed hands that were all green, and that was good enough for Arthur; he paid little attention to where any given hand was positioned at any given moment. The Weasley patriarch then threw on a robe and knocked on Ginny's bedroom door. When his groggy daughter opened that door, Arthur explained that her mother wasn't feeling well, and told Ginny to keep an eye on her while he called into the Ministry to take a sick day. He didn't stop to wonder why Molly's screams hadn't woken Ginny in the first place (and wouldn't have liked the answer had he asked…earlier that summer, Bill had applied silencing charms on the walls at Ginny's request, keeping her from having to hear her parents having loud, hippogriff-riding sex).

It was too early to speak to somebody directly when Arthur floo-called into work, so he just left a message saying that he had to stay home for the day to care for his wife. He then went into the kitchen and opened the cabinet drawer that held the potions that Molly didn't need to hide. He briefly considered the bezoar that was at the front of this drawer, but decided that it wouldn't help (since the hair restorative potion wasn't a poison). Instead, he grabbed the potion that no child wanted to take…the potion used when a parent didn't have a bezoar on hand.

When he returned to the bedroom, Arthur thanked his daughter for her help, and told her that he would be busy caring for her mother over most of the morning. He therefore asked Ginny to help with making breakfast for the others. She agreed, disappeared into her room, and promptly decided that everyone else could make their own damn breakfast. Ginny then crawled back into bed and cuddled up against her two pygmy puffs.

Meanwhile, Arthur had stripped off his wife's nightgown (just one more thing to get in the way), and carried her into the lavatory. He then propped her onto the toilet seat, positioned the garbage pail in between her knees, and cancelled out the paralysis and sleeping charms. It took only a few seconds for the pain to wake Molly up, and not that many more seconds for Arthur to explain the situation and convince her to swallow the Twipecac potion…the potion that thoroughly emptied out Molly's stomach by expelling its contents in two opposite directions.

Arthur spent the next several minutes reapplying the numbing charm, and holding his wife's newly-grown hair back from her face as she vomited into the bucket and violently moved her bowels. Once the vomit and diarrhea was replaced by dry heaves and wet farts, Arthur cleaned Molly with some magic and guided his sobbing wife back to her bed. He recast the _Somnus_ spell, the spent the next thirty minutes repeatedly casting the shaving charm in a battle against his wife's pubic hairs.

The ingrown pubic hairs won.

Close to the point of magical exhaustion, Arthur reluctantly dragged himself down to the ground floor and placed a floo-call to Poppy Pomfrey. The Hogwarts matron was happy to come through the floo and help out, once Arthur whispered Molly's symptoms into the fireplace. Upon Poppy's arrival, Arthur led her up to the master bedroom. Once inside the bedroom, Poppy announced that she now had two patients, and ordered Arthur to crawl into his separate bed and recharge his magic with a nap. He didn't fight this order.

An hour later, Poppy touched Arthur's shoulder and gently woke him up.

"Is everything….?" he asked.

The mediwitch nodded her head. "I ferreted out the root cause, and used enough blood replenishing potion to dilute the hair restorative's residual strength. She's out of the woods."

Arthur got out of bed and walked towards his wife's bed. She was sleeping peacefully, with the bed linens pulled up to her chin. He thanked Poppy for her help, then asked about that root cause.

Poppy snorted. "I see something like this once or twice a year at school, actually," she said. "Never heard of it happening to an older witch…"

"What's that?"

"There's a female version of the shaving charm," said Poppy.

"Really? What in Merlin's name for?" Arthur asked.

Poppy shrugged. "Well, let's just say that a few witches, and more than a few Muggle women, don't care have hair on their legs, or in places…higher…than that."

"Oh," said Arthur. His eyes widened as he realized what the Matron was intimating.

"Really? They use a shaving charm…_down there_?"

"It's called the depilatory charm," Poppy said with a head nod. "It's not a terribly difficult spell for a witch to learn, once she gets over the embarrassment of needing to ask how it's cast. And there's the problem."

"What?"

"The problem comes from being too embarrassed to ask for help," said Poppy. "If a witch tries to wing it, and casts the spell incorrectly, it will still take off the hair. It's when that hair grows back that the ingrown problems start."

"Oh…so you're thinking that Molly tried to shave…and botched it?"

"Yes."

"But why…I know that she was still was…erm…unshaven…the night before last. Do those kind of hairs grow back that fast?"

"Not without the help of a potion like the one Molly used."

"Why would a witch want to grow back what she just shaved off?" Arthur wondered.

Poppy shrugged. "Second thoughts? Regrets? Satisfying their curiosity?" she asked. "Magic makes it easy for a witch to change back and forth between different hair styles. This is the same kind of thing, only lower. Not a problem if you cast the depilatory charm correctly, but if you don't, then try to gain it back all at once with a potion?"

"Oh," said Arthur. Now thoroughly embarrassed, he asked Poppy if she had been able to fix everything. The Matron shook her head.

"I really haven't seen a depilatory charm botched this bad before," she stated. "There's no easy way to reverse the damage. Good news is that the ill effects will eventually taper off."

"So…"

"So Molly will need to keep herself hair-free _down there_ until they start growing out straight again," Poppy stated. "She'll have to learn how to correctly cast the depilatory charm, and then use it every day or two for the next few months."

"I see," said Arthur. He looked at his sleeping wife, and then let out a deep breath. "I really appreciate you coming over straight away and helping sort this out."

"Not a problem."

"So…would you be willing to explain this to Molly once she wakes? And maybe teach her how to correctly use that charm?"

Poppy smiled as she closed her medical bag.

"I'll let you in on a healer's secret, Arthur…it's the exact same spell that you use to clear stubble from your chin."

"Really?"

"Did you have any problems using your shaving charm on her?" Poppy asked. "Until, that is, you wore yourself out?"

"No, not really."

"Bang up job delivering emergency first aid, by the way," the Matron stated. "What I'm driving at is…you could teach Molly yourself. Unless you think that she'd be more comfortable having a witch teach her?"

Arthur winced at the question. He shook his head, and said, "No, I really don't think she would want me to walk her through that kind of spell, in that kind of location."

Poppy let an unprofessional giggle escape from her lips as she imagined how that scene would play out. She patted Arthur on the back and said, "No, I don't think so either."

**oo00OO00oo**

**A/ N #2: ** Chapter scenes in the Muggle world forced me to deal with timelines and the age-appropriateness of bank notes, train timetables, and attitudes toward backpackers overnighting in airport terminals. I've never been a slave to canon or its timeline, and prefer not to devote extensive time researching what model of mobile phone was available in retain in 1996. But even I would think it strange to have a HP story in which a modern-day Muggle helps Bill by whipping out her smart phone to check out on-line train schedules. So, while not shying away from contemporary Muggle tech, infrastructure, or culture, I've tried to push these elements far enough into the background so that they aren't critical to the narrative. In other words…you don't need to point out that the 100 euro note wasn't introduced until 2002, or that Paris-bound Eurostar trains departed from Waterloo Station up until 2007. I already know. It really doesn't matter. Apologies to those whose reading experience was ruined by these minutiae.


	14. Chapter 14: Joyeux anniversaire (Part 1)

**A Boon for Bill**  
a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: ** Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?

In the too long interval between updates, Jo managed to stir up a bit of a storm when she publicly acknowledged what harmony shippers have known all along. I almost did a victory lap around the breakfast table when I read the news. And then I logged onto mugglenet to gloat. Just a bit.

The original version of this chapter was 20k words and still growing before I decided that it needed to be split into two parts to make it easier to digest. If I was a real author with a real story and a real editor I probably would have just gone through and cut out a third of the less-important stuff, but I'm not and it's not. And based on reviews, my readers seem to appreciate the density more than they complain about it. So the good news is that this chapter is still 13k words long and I've got a massive head start on the next chapter.

This chapter rolls back the timeline a couple of hours to allow me to catch up with action on the Continent. There's also the hour time zone difference to deal with…all posted times are local (which means that the Gabby scene that started the previous chapter actually was 4am local time, rather than 3am). I'll strive to keep time differences from materially affecting the story.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 14: **_**Joyeux anniversaire**_** (Part 1) **

_7:00am Central European Time (GMT +1)  
Chateau Delacour  
Theoule sur Mer, French Riveria_

Waking up in one of the nicer guest bedrooms within the Delacour ancestral home would have been far more enjoyable had Harry's bed mate hadn't looked as if she was about to cry.

Pushing his own thoughts and desires to the side, the teen-aged wizard reached out and lovingly touched his girlfriend's cheek.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Sweetheart…go back to sleep."

"Have _you_ gotten any sleep at all?"

Hermione shook her head.

"Not since Bill arrived. Not that it matters…we've got a busy day ahead of us."

Harry propped himself up on an elbow. He pursed his lips, then asked, "Crookshanks?"

Hermione sighed.

"It's not Bill's fault that he didn't bring him…would have had a hard time anyway, given the way that he actually got here, and I'm happy for Crooks…and his harem…or family….it's just that…."

"He's your familiar and also part of your family?"

"Yeah. It just caught me off guard, because kneazles are supposed to be so very loyal…especially when they are a witch's or wizard's familiar."

Harry nodded his head. He thought for a moment before asking, "Maybe he was displaying some of that loyalty when he decided to stay behind?"

Hermione snorted. "Loyalty to whom? To me, or to his harem?"

"Maybe both?" Harry asked. "I'm just thinking…you weren't planning on the last time you saw him being _the_ last time, right?"

"What?"

"We were planning on coming back inside after the meeting with the goblins," Harry explained.

Hermione frowned. "True, but Crookshanks is smart enough to know that plans change…and Bill was quite certain that Crooks understood his intention to bring him along to France."

"Maybe so," said Harry. "Still, what was the last thing that you told Crookshanks to do before you left?"

"Hmmm….to keep an eye out for Molly?"

"So maybe he's still following those instructions?"

"But there's no need, now that we're in France…and he made his reasons for staying behind clear enough to Bill, with that flock of felines showing up at the right moment…"

Harry acknowledged the thought with a head nod, then said, "On the other hand…Crookshanks still hanging around the Burrow could help send Molly and Dumbles off our track. After all, if you went missing and had no intentions of returning to the Burrow, why would you leave your familiar behind?"

"So you're saying that I shouldn't be upset right now?" Hermione asked tersely.

"No, not at all," Harry quickly replied. "Just saying that Crookshanks is a big boy, and he could be helping you right now by choosing to stay back with his harem. Maybe in more ways than one."

"Sounds like you're just a guy, making excuses for another guy's bad behavior," Hermione quipped.

"No, really…think about it," said Harry. "I mean…I love having Crookshanks around as much as you, and it's pretty cool that I can communicate with him almost as well as you can, but sometimes…"

"You aren't jealous of my relationship with my familiar, are you Harry?"

"No, not at all," said Harry. "It'd be pretty hypocritical of me, given that my familiar is female. What I'm trying to say is that…well, I'm a guy, and I'm pretty clueless about certain things, so it really helped a lot when Crookshanks was able to broadcast, and help clue me into how you thought about me, relationship wise, but…might be nice to take a break from the broadcasting."

Hermione thought about this for a moment as she covered an escaping yawn. There was a hint of a smile on her face once she pulled her hand away.

"We don't need Crooks in a different country to get a broadcasting break…just need him to curl up in a different bedroom….it's hard to sleep when you're being bombarded with pervy loads of lust."

"Pervy?" Harry asked. "You make it sound like it's wrong for me to lust after my drop-dead sexy girlfriend."

"No, that's fine…it's the keeping me up while you were rubbing off five times a night that was problematic."

Harry chuckled. "Well, then…it's a good thing that we've solved that problem, isn't it?"

"What?" Hermione asked. "You're thinking that you won't need to…you know…now that we've escaped from Azkaburrow?"

"Hermione! I wouldn't presume such a thing!" Harry said in mock protest. "I was referring to the fact that you won't know when I'm lusting after my sexy girlfriend as long as Crookshanks isn't around to broadcast."

The Muggleborn witch rolled her eyes and quipped, "Oh, woe is me…now I'll just have to figure that out the old-fashioned way."

"How's that?"

Hermione replied to the question by slipping a hand under the covers. She gave his erect todger a playful squeeze through Harry's boxer shorts, then asked, "Broadcasting much, Sweetie?"

Harry grinned, and began to snake his own hand under the duvet. Hermione shook her head and grabbed his wrist.

"What?" Harry asked. "I can't see if you're broadcasting as well?"

"It's not as obvious when you're a girl, Harry."

"Makes it more fun searching for the broadcast signal, don't you think?"

Hermione shook her head as she pulled Harry's hand back above the sheets.

"Not now."

"But I'm the birthday boy…don't I get to unwrap my presents?" Harry whined.

"Not with Daddy across the hall."

"But we went through that fire drill when Bill arrived…and we've got Gabby running interference."

"We've also got Gabby curled up on our doorstep," Hermione replied. "Surprised she hasn't decided to curl up in front of our bed."

Harry couldn't help chuckling as he imagined the scene Hermione had described.

"What?" Hermione challenged.

"I'm just imaging Gabby curling up like a cat," Harry replied. "Hey, there you go…don't need to worry about Crookshanks when you've got Gabby-Cat here, willing to take his place."

"Honestly…the thought of me bonding with Gabrielle as my familiar…"

"Sounds kinky," Harry joked.

The comment earned the teenager a rough push on the shoulder.

"Keep that up, and you won't be opening my presents."

Harry gasped. "Really?"

"Try me!"

"Isn't trying you part of my presents?" Harry quipped.

Hermione was just about to fire off a rejoinder when she paused, and considered their situation.

They had made it to France, and were out from underneath Molly's overbearing presence. Crookshanks was capable of taking care of himself. Meanwhile, she was in bed with her boyfriend, and had already celebrated that achievement a few hours previous with an intense snog while hands were in each other's pants. And it was Harry's birthday, and they were now both above the local age of consent, and she really was planning on giving him her virginity as a birthday present. Which wasn't a big sacrifice, as she'd wanted to jump his bones all Summer. And yeah…her parents were across the hall, but her mum had indirectly stated her intention to run interference for her, and Gabby was running interference, so they could get away with it right then and there. Then again, she had a very special mail-order outfit that she wanted to be wearing when Harry "unwrapped" her, and she was certain she had morning breath, so now was not the time to go all the way.

Hermione being Hermione, that rambling chain of thought took only a few seconds to mentally complete. This gave her more than enough time to come up with an alternative that Harry would enjoy.

Still fearing she had morning breath, the Muggleborn witch gave her boyfriend a quick closed-mouth peck on the lips. This was the first of a series of kisses that trailed down Harry's bare chest.

While Harry wasn't as smart of his brilliant girlfriend, he was certainly smart enough not to question his girlfriend's motives as she rubbed her body down the length of his own, or when her head disappeared underneath the covers.

The phrase "Looking a gift horse in the mouth" popped into the teen-aged wizard's head and stayed there. Certainly not because he thought of Hermione as horse-like…it was because of all the talk about gifts. And because of what Hermione was doing to him with her mouth.

Harry Potter couldn't remember his first birthday, which was the one and only time that he had heard "Happy Birthday to You" sung to him. But he would remember the second time that he heard that song on his birthday for the rest of his life. Because Hermione wasn't singing…she was humming.

Humming the birthday song as she bobbed her head up and down.

Humming the birthday song because her mouth was otherwise occupied.

It was all the birthday boy could do to hold off his release until the middle of the third verse.

**oo00OO00oo**

In a second bedroom within the Delacour ancestral home, a slightly older naked witch was doing more whining than humming as her fiancé picked his boxer shorts up off the carpet and cast a cleaning charm.

"Why won't you come back to bed? You've been up all night!" Fleur protested. She held her arms towards her bedside boyfriend and added, "Let's celebrate our escape again."

The yawn that escaped Bill's lips didn't influence the response that followed.

"It's a work day, Fleur, and the wards around Harry's new house still need to be tested."

Fleur pouted. "You do not think that we have earned a petite vacation?"

Bill chuckled. "Doesn't matter if I did. You know as well as I do that the word 'vacation' doesn't translate into Gobbledygook."

The French witch looked at her clock. "But it is still early, and there's plenty of time to…"

Her fiancé sighed. "As much as I would like to muddle around with you…there's meetings to plan, and two sets of parents that will want a breakfast update on where things stand…"

Fleur closed her eyes and rubbed then with her fingers as she sorted out options. Once she reached a decision, she summoned a family house elf, and asked if she would coordinate a 7:45am meeting of family and guests in the dining room.

Bill arched an eyebrow as he glanced at the clock sitting on a bedside table.

"A half-hour?" he asked. "That's a pretty short nap."

"No, it's long enough for a shower," Fleur decided as she pulled down the covers and slipped out of bed.

Her fiancé snorted, then shook his head as he sniffed an armpit.

"Don't think that I'm all that sweaty," he said.

Fleur pulled Bill into a hug. Without warning she then snatched his boxers out of his hand, and dragged him into the attached bathroom.

They were in the shower when the house elf popped back a few minutes later to confirm the breakfast arrangements. That Fleur kept Bill's head pinned between her thighs as she thanked the servant for her assistance said as much about her nonchalant attitude about oral sex in front of the hired help as it did her need to muddle along with her fiancé.

**oo00OO00oo**

In a third bedroom within the Delacour ancestral home, Hermione's father strained against the urge to barge into that first bedroom, where he (correctly) suspected that his daughter and her boyfriend were up to no good.

The door to the guest bedroom's en suite bathroom opened behind him and his wife called out his name. Roger rose from the bed and turned towards her. He was a half-step towards the bath, with one foot in the air, when his brain caught up to what his eyes were seeing.

Emily was standing in the opened doorway, dripping wet and completely naked.

Roger stopped short. While his wife was by no means a skittish prude, she was rarely comfortable enough and confident enough to have sex with the lights on, or to casually stand naked in front of her husband.

"Something wrong, Dear?" Emily coyly asked.

"No…not at all!" Roger proclaimed, "I was about to ask the same thing…problems with the shower?"

Emily chuckled. "In a way…yes," she said. "It's a magic shower, and I had to call for that very nice house elf to come show me how to work the controls."

"Oh. So…do we need to call her back with some towels?" Roger asked.

His wife glanced down her front and smiled as she shook her head. "No, no…I just figured that I ought to be the one to show you how the shower works," Emily said. "Unless you'd rather have that very helpful _female_ servant show you?"

Assuming that she already knew the answer to her question, Hermione's mum turned and walked back into the bathroom. Roger followed a few seconds later, after taking time to both appreciate his wife's naked bum and to readjust the erection that was stirring underneath his pajamas.

"The whole system is rather decadent," Emily stated, as she opened the glass shower stall door and stepped inside. "You touch this button thinking about how warm you want the water to be, and where you want the water to spray…you don't even have to stand."

"Really?" Roger asked.

"Yes, really," his wife replied. A breath caught in Roger's throat as she waggled her eyebrows, spread her feet, and squatted. A moment later a miniature geyser erupted up from the tiled shower floor, creating a cascading column of water that stopped just short of Emily's bum. She squatted a bit further, closing the gap between flesh and fountain, and reached out to brace against the sides of the shower stall. The magical spray was solid enough to support Emily's weight, and stimulating enough to elicit a moan from Emily's lips.

"That's…that's amazing," Roger stammered.

"Yes, but do you know what the best part is about this shower chair?" Emily asked.

Roger shook his head.

His wife leaned backwards into the upward magical flow of water. The spray expanded its footprint to support her back, and lifted her completely off the ground. Emily spread her legs and opened herself to both her husband's gaze and the pulsating spray.

"It reclines," she purred.

Roger was mesmerized by the pulsating tentacle of water that was attacking his wife's crotch. So focused was his attention that he almost missed the "come hither" look that Emily was giving him.

Almost.

Roger's pajamas hit the floor as he strode towards his wife, erection in hand. The seemingly-sentient base flow of water pushed Emily's hips a foot higher into the air, positioning her fanny at just the right height and angle to accept her husband's advance.

**oo00OO00oo**

Back in the first bedroom, Hermione ducked out from under the covers and snuggled up against her boyfriend's side.

"That was amazing," Harry whispered. He kissed the top of Hermione's head and asked, "Can I hum too?"

The Muggleborn shook her head. "Just want to cuddle for a moment," she said contentedly.

A Delacour house elf interrupted Harry's advances by popping onto the bed.

"Yikes!" Hermione yipped, as she quickly pulled the covers up towards their chins.

"Pardon me Mademoiselle and Monsieur," the house elf said, "but your presence is requested by Monsieur Weasley and Mademoiselle Fleur in the main dining room in twenty-five minutes' time."

"Will it be just the four of us?" Harry asked.

The house elf shook his head. "Mademoiselle Fleur asked that all family members and guests be at the table."

Hermione's eyes went wide. "Do you know if my parents have been told yet?"

The house elf nodded her head, which sent Hermione's heart racing until she realized that the house elf was responding to the specific question asked.

"Yes, I know," the little servant said.

Harry's interactions with Dobby gave him an edge in getting anywhere in conversations with house elves.

"Have Hermione's parents been informed yet?" he asked.

"No, Monsieur, they have not," the house elf replied. "Mademoiselle Gabrielle instructed me to notify your parents last."

"Whew!" Hermione sighed.

"Thank you," Harry told the house elf.

"You're very welcome, Monsieur Potter," the servant replied.

She then popped away.

"Shite!" Hermione whispered.

"What?"

"Last doesn't mean that we weren't notified next-to-last!" Hermione hissed.

The Muggleborn witch whipped off the covers, retrieved a silk dressing gown from the carpeted floor, and dashed towards closet that housed the hidden doorway that connected their two bedrooms.

The door opened into a different walk-in closet. The black turtleneck sweater, trousers and knit cap that she'd worn during their escape from Britain were cleaned, pressed, and hanging on one of the racks. That outfit looked rather plain and lonely, compared with the muggle and magical attire that was now hanging on the opposite side of the closet. Hermione stepped over the threshold and quietly closed the hidden door behind her. She paused in front of the unfamiliar clothing and grabbed a pair of capris and a plain white short-sleeved shirt. The labels confirmed what she had assumed at first glance…they were all her size, and (if not magical knock-offs) all high-end design.

Hermione Granger was not a clothes horse, or some frilly little thing that cared about the names on the labels. But these seemed to perfectly match her style (at least when she was around her parents), and that feeling only grew when she opened a built-in chest of drawers and discovered some lovely silk unmentionables. Dragging her fingers against silk and lace, Hermione smiled to herself and whispered, "Now here's some lovely wrapping paper!"

A door knock dragged Harry's girlfriend out of her pervy plans for presents. She said, "Just a second," and quickly slipped on her dressing gown.

It took a bit of doing for Hermione to convince Gabby that she didn't need help washing her back in the shower or picking out an outfit for the day. It took far less time for the Muggleborn to realize that it would be prudent to tell the younger witch that her boyfriend wouldn't need that kind of help, either.

**oo00OO00oo**

Gabby couldn't wait to sing_ Joyeux anniversaire_, so she serenaded the birthday boy as she escorted the well-dressed wizard and his well-dressed girlfriend down to breakfast. Harry had to mentally focus on what he needed to accomplish that day in order to keep from linking this version to what his girlfriend had hummed earlier (the last thing he needed was to send out any kind of physical signal that might be misconstrued by the younger part-Veela). Still, it was hard for him not to be in a very, very good mood as they entered the chateau's dining room. And it was just as hard to not notice that this good mood was shared by everyone else as they arrived for breakfast. When he said as much while filling his plate from a side-table buffet, Gabby matter-of-factly linked the good moods to good morning sex (for everyone except for her, she added with a pout). Hermione hushed the younger witch, but then whispered an acknowledgement borne from past observations (at least when it came time to interpret the satisfied grins on her parents' faces).

The breakfast table discussion focused on the day's plan of action. This led to an explanation on why Paul Delacour had two extra springs in his step that morning (as well as why he was so certain that the French magical government would support whatever plans they decided upon).

**ooo/ a brief expository interlude \\ooo**

The French Ministry of Magic and its system of governance were quite similar to its Muggle counterpart (by design, rather than coincidence, as there was far more interactions between the two governments than in Britain). The Executive Branch was led by two wizards or witches: an elected Head of State (the Magical President) and their designate, a separate Head of Government (the Magical Prime Minister). The President was free to appoint whomever he or she wanted as Prime Minister, and this usually meant that the two leaders were from the same political party. But as the President's term of office was a few years longer than those serving in the legislative branch, there were times when a President was forced to appoint a political opponent to serve as Prime Minister.

This was one of those times, and Paul Delacour was the opposition party's Prime Minister. He won that appointment after his party had soundly thrashed their opponents and regained control of the Magical National Assembly. New presidential elections were less than a year away, and there was every reason to believe that Fleur's father would both run for that office and win.

Every reason but one, that is (as Fleur was quick to point out).

To say that relations between the Magical governments of France and Britain were strained would be putting things mildly. Each considered the other far more of an adversary than an ally, and those sentiments were shared by their respective citizenries (While Molly's disdain for all things French has heavily influenced by her son's choice of fiancées, it still reflected the "on the street" attitude of many British witches and wizards).

Paul Delacour was a politician who loved his eldest daughter very, very much. He would have never forced her to break off her engagement with an English wizard…even though there was a political price to be paid for that relationship. He was the leader of a relatively progressive political party that was amenable to thawing the icy relationship with the British Ministry of Magic. This left a political opening for their more conservative opponents and (according to magical pollsters) boosted Delacour's "unfavorable" rating by three or four percentage points. This percentage might have easily doubled should it become a focus of attack in the upcoming Presidential election.

So aside from the joy of having his daughter home safe and sound (and on French territory), there was a political reason for Fleur's father to be so happy that morning. And that happy feeling was shared when the agreed-upon order of the day required a few secure owl posts to be sent out to key allies within the French government.

**oo00OO00oo**

_8:30am CET (7:30am GMT)  
__Ministère des Affaires gobelin  
__Ministère Français De La Magie, Paris__  
__  
_The French wizard in charge of governmental relations with Gringott's and the Goblin Nation was also in a very good mood that morning, and it showed…from the smile on his face as he walked into the office, to the way that he thanked his secretary when she delivered a tray of coffee and croissants. The gleam in the Minister's eyes might have caught a less-experienced goblin by surprise, but the Director of Gringott's operations in France had more than fifty years of human interactions under his war belt, and twenty years of experience dealing with politicians. The goblin executive therefore took his counterpart's jovial mood in stride as the two met for a hastily arranged meeting in the Minister's office.

"Well, my friend, you appeared to have woken up on the right side of the bed today," the Gringott's manager noted. "I would ask whose bed that was, but I suspect that I already know the answer."

The Frenchman laughed. "Ah, Monsieur Gambit, you know this old wizard's foibles all too well…or is it time for me to upgrade the privacy wards surrounding my mistress's apartment?"

"Remy, you wound me…I oversaw the construction of those wards myself!"

"Exactly, my friend…exactly," the Minister quipped. "But no, my good mood has nothing to do with the exquisite things that my Marie can do with her tongue. It is a much happier situation that I find myself in today."

"So Marie's sister is in town as well?" the Gringott's manager asked with a wink.

The wizard chuckled and shook his head. "What is that Goblin saying that you love to share with me? That good profits are always more satisfying than a good fuck?"

"Ah, so this is about politics," the goblin replied.

"Exactly," the wizard replied. "Our long political nightmare is over."

"Really?" the manager asked. "So your party has finally reached an accord with the President's party?"

"No, no…much better," the Minister replied. He looked towards the closed office door, then leaned forward and whispered, "The prodigal daughter has returned."

The cup of espresso in the goblin's hand stopped just short of his lips, as his gaze darted to meet his counterpart's.

"You seem surprised?" the wizard asked, as he leaned back into his chair. "For the first time, I know something of mutual importance before you do? Or are you just being polite?"

The knowing smile and acknowledging head nod was offered by the head of Gringott's French operations not as a response, but as a delaying tactic while the implications of what had just been shared with him settled into his brain.

"Bon," the wizard said. "There is more to do here this morning than share a bit of political gossip." He reached into a robe pocket, and pulled out a wax-sealed scroll.

"This is from….?"

"By the daughter's father himself, as you can see," the Minister said, as he nodded towards the mark within the wax seal. "We have need for an arbitrated meeting in the Treaty Room."

"Which parties will be involved?" the goblin asked, confirming for himself that the document had been sealed by the Prime Minister.

"Haven't a clue," the wizard admitted. He waved a hand towards the scroll and added, "I suspect you will have more of one, once you read the message."

The Gringott's Director nodded in agreement as he slipped a sharpened nail under the parchment's edge and broke the seal. It took most of his decades of experience and training not to react visibly to the handwritten text. He scanned the message a second time to confirm his first reading, then rolled up the scroll and rose from his chair.

"Please inform your Prime Minister that I will arrange for the requested participant on our end to be in the Treaty Room for a 2pm meeting," the goblin stated. "I will confirm my ability to satisfy both my intentions and his request in writing no later than noon."

The wizard Minister arched an eyebrow. "I will do as you've requested," he replied. "Shall we discuss arbiter selection?"

The goblin waved his hand dismissively. "One of yours will do fine…now if you will excuse me?"

The wizard snorted as he rose from his desk and escorted his guest out of his office. "Yes, yes…time is galleons, and all that. Shall we expect your return this afternoon, then?"

Gambit the bank director shook his head, and replied, "I very much doubt it."

**oo00OO00oo**

_8:59am CET (8:59am GMT)  
__Gringott's (Marseilles Branch)_

Not completely certain how they would be received at work after the previous night's encounters with the goblins, Bill and Fleur thought it prudent to floo to the most popular restaurant within Marseilles' smallish magical district. Fleur's father also thought it would be prudent to have the couple trailed by a well-trained team of French hit-wizards, just in case (not that Bill and Fleur were aware of this extra step). From there, the couple walked to the front entrance of the local Gringott's branch. Their wands were at the ready and their heads were on swivels, but the only suspicious things spotted were the toothy grins worn by the halberd-wielding hobgoblins that guarded the reinforced wooden doors.

The smile on the face of the one-armed wizard that was waiting just inside those doors was far less threatening (but far more intriguing).

"Morning, mate!"

Bill's eyes widened as he watched the bartender at the Curse Breakers' canteen extend his only hand.

"Morning, Nick," he replied, shaking the other wizard's hand. "What in Merlin's name are you doing here?"

"Gringott's business," the older curse-breaker replied. "They posted me here thinking you might respond better to a friendly face."

"Did they, now?" Bill asked. He nodded towards Fleur and said, "Nick, you remember my fiancée Fleur Delacour?"

Nick turned towards the French witch, kissed the back of her hand, and said, "Enchanté."

"So what's going on, then?" Bill asked.

The other wizard shrugged. "There's rumors floating around that you stirred up a real hornet's nest last night. Boss got me outta bed early this morning…said that I was to report here to see if you showed up for work. If you did, then I'm supposed to escort you to your job site. Otherwise, they wanted me to be the one to put your ward scheme to the test."

Fleur frowned. "And you knew enough to stand by the public entrance, rather than the floo?"

The one-armed curse-breaker smiled, and shook his head. "While I'd never want to underestimate their surveillance skills…they posted another friendly face there…so to speak."

"Who?"

"The Potter account manager's secretary."

"Malice?" asked Bill. When Nick nodded, the red-haired wizard chuckled, and added, "Hence the need to qualify that her face was friendly."

"Absolutely," the retired curse-breaker agreed. He nodded towards Fleur and said, "And a great reason why I'm so glad that you're both here."

"Why's that?"

"Because the goblins want wanted a female's perspective on whether the repair and remodeling effort inside the house would meet with the future Lady Potter's approval," Nick explained to Fleur. "If you hadn't shown up today, it would have been Malice offering that perspective."

The idea of Chokebar's foul-mouthed sex-positive goblin secretary signing off on the interior decorating caused Bill to laugh out loud. This wasn't exactly the best first impression to give as the three magicals were approached by both the Marseilles branch manager and the head of all of Gringott's operations within all of France, but it didn't stop the two goblins from being over-the-top courteous and deferential as a portkey was offered that whisked the entire group out to Bill's work site.

**oo00OO00oo**

_9:15am GMT (10:15am CET)  
Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts _

A sigh of resignation escaped from Albus Dumbledore's lips as he wandlessly pulled his chair back from his office desk and sat down. He had been away for two weeks and was now facing a small mountain of administrative paperwork that had built up during his secret trip to the Orient. The Headmaster's sigh was quickly followed by a yawn as he was still struggling with portkey lag. And while there was a potion that reset body clocks and adjusted for time-zone differences, the effectiveness of this brew diminished as the age of the body clock increased. And Dumbledore's body clock had been ticking for a very, very long time.

That his body clock would stop ticking within the year was something that the ancient wizard had finally come to accept during his convalescent visit to Japan. He'd been in the denial phase of grief for most of the Summer holiday, ever since that fateful night when he'd foolishly abandoned all common sense and slipped the Voldemort-cursed ring onto his finger. Severus Snape had pronounced the curse to be terminal, but he was a Potions Master, not a Healer. Albus had been quite confident that a proper curse-breaking specialist would be able to counter the curse and reverse the death sentence (and it had been that confidence that had allowed him to act so serenely when he picked Harry Potter up from his relatives).

Of course, given the tenuous political situation within Britain, a visit to St. Mungo's had been out of the question; too much of a chance that word of his affliction (and how it was obtained) would leak out to the wrong people. So he had used his ICW connections to book a two week long visit to a remote magical hot-spring resort high in the Japanese Alps. Unfortunately, the healers working at that onsen had confirmed Snape's amateur diagnosis. In their professional opinion, Dumbledore's fate was sealed the moment the curse was activated, and the short delay before he sought out Snape's aid hadn't kept a cure from being applied. Having used the balance of his visit to progress through the stages of grief from denial to acceptance, the Headmaster now chose to believe that Snape's misguided opinion had been offered out of ignorance, rather than spite.

There had been some comfort in knowing that delaying his overseas diagnosis and treatment hadn't made a difference. It would have been impossible to leave the country until after Harry Potter had recharged the wards at Privet Drive and then been delivered into the arms of a trusted lieutenant behind a robust ward scheme. Molly Weasley had proven her ability to ride herd on Harry and his friends at Grimmauld Place during the previous holiday, and there had been no reason to suspect that her mothering/monitoring skills would slip after her return to the remodeled Burrow.

No reason to suspect…until a frantic floo call from Arthur Weasley interrupted his musing on overbearing mothers and his own mortality.

It took a few moments to calm the normally even-keeled wizard down enough to understand the situation.

It was bad news.

But just how bad the news was didn't become clear to the Headmaster until after he ended his conversation with Arthur with a promise to arrive at the Burrow in short order.

Magic made the more than sixty headmaster portraits hanging on the walls of Dumbledore's office all roughly the same size (thanks to the efforts of a Seventeenth-Century headmaster who had grown tired of the cross-wall whining over whose frame was bigger). There was nothing that magic could do, however, to make the advice offered by each former headmaster equally useful. There were three or four portraits whose suggestions were particularly annoying to Dumbledore (mostly due to their counsel against blind obedience to the so-called "Greater Good"). His work-around for these critics was a powerful silencing charm that could have been used to quiet Sirius Black's mother (had Dumbledore not seen the "Greater Good" benefits for her haranguing). But not wanting to put good wall space to waste, Dumbledore had gone one step further and found other ways to make use of these recalcitrant portraits.

One of these steps came into play when the Headmaster walked up to the portrait of Quinten Trimble and tapped on the wooden frame with his wand in precisely the opposite sequence of taps used to enter Diagon Alley from the Leakey Cauldron. Once the last tap was made, the silent portrait's scowling face was replaced by a hand-drawn magical map of the British Isles.

The normally serene headmaster voiced a not-so-serene expletive when he spotted the wide distribution of bright red dots across the parchment.

If the map was to be believed, Harry Potter was at dozens of different places all at the same time. And not just within Britain and Ireland…more than a few of the red dots were bouncing off the edge of the parchment, suggesting that the Boy-Who-Lived was no longer within Magical Britain. Dots were located over land and over sea, some dots were stationary while others were moving along curvilinear tracts. And with all of that, there was still at least one dot hovering over the Burrow's West Country locale, and at least one hovering over Hogwarts.

Not yet ready to come to grips with this information, Dumbledore rushed over the trinket shelf that Harry Potter had destroyed at last term's end. While most of the mangled doo-dads were still broken, the two charmed devices that the Headmaster had taken great pains to fix were operational. One device monitored the strength of the wards that he had placed on Privet Drive, while the second monitored Harry Potter's emotional and physical state. Curiously, neither had raised the alarm; the wards surrounding the Dursley residence were operating at full strength, and Harry Potter had never been happier or healthier (if the readings were to be believed).

Seeing the need to bring the wayward teenage wizard back under heel as quickly as possible, Dumbledore spun towards Fawkes's perch and asked him to provide transportation to Harry Potter's present location. The phoenix, who had been monitoring both the situation and the Headmaster's intentions, finally decided that enough was enough and burst into flames two weeks shy of his normal molting schedule.

Dumbledore scowled at the reborn chick that emerged from the ashes. It would be two or three days before the phoenix was mature enough to provide fire-transport anywhere, much less to Harry Potter's unknown location.

With too much contradictory evidence to sort out and too little time and travel options available to him, the Headmaster sent a patronus message out to Alastor Moody, ordering the retired Auror to meeting him at the Burrow as soon as possible. He then threw a pinch of floo powder into the fireplace, and reluctantly called out his destination.

**oo00OO00oo**

_11:00am CET__  
__Chateau Delacour_

Hermione Granger considered her boyfriend's fidgeting both exasperating and endearing as she tried to make him look presentable.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, if you don't stand still I'll never get this tie straight," she gently chided.

"Sorry, I'm just…"

"Nervous?"

"Anxious, is more like it," Harry decided. "So much to do today, so little time…"

"Do we need the time turner just to get your tie straight?" Hermione teased.

Harry leaned his head away from his girlfriend's ministrations.

"Should be good enough…this is supposed to be the easiest meeting of the day, right?"

Hermione held her hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright…up to you if want to look mussed up for the pictures."

"Pictures?" Harry asked. "I didn't hear anybody say anything about pictures!"

"Well, just an idea that I had," Hermione explained.

A house elf popped up to announce that their guest had arrived. Harry thanked the servant and asked that they be shown into the room. Once the house elf popped away, the teen-aged wizard turned to Hermione and hissed, "What's this idea, then?"

"Sending a big picture of you to Dumbledore," Hermione replied. "It'd show you shaking the attaché's hand as he presents your new passport."

"I like it," Harry said with a grin. He took a glance around the room that Fleur's mum had offered for his meeting and asked, "Maybe we should conjure up a big Canadian flag to use as a backdrop?"

Hermione giggled. "I was thinking more about a big sign that said "Take off, you Hoser!"

"What's a hoser?"

Someone called out, "It's what a kid from Toronto calls his brother when his mother won't let him swear!"

Harry and Hermione both spun around to face a man dressed in a tailored Muggle business suit. The house elf standing by his side introduced the man as the North American Confederation liaison who was serving as a magical attaché within Muggle Canada's Embassy to France. A blushing teen-aged witch stammered out an apology as they introduced themselves. The Canadian wizard let out a hearty laugh.

"No harm done, eh?" he asked (laying on a thick accent). "I'm surprised that the reach of the McKenzie brothers extended as far as Magical Britain."

"I'm Muggleborn, Sir," Hermione explained. "And my father loved SCTV almost as much as he loves Python."

The attaché chuckled. "Charming, attractive, _**and **_raised in a culturally-enriched household? Would you like to hear my emigration sales pitch, Miss Granger?"

Hermione blushed a little more deeply. She gestured towards a set of chairs in front of the room's fireplace and replied, "I'm sure that we'd find your presentation fascinating, but perhaps…another time?"

"Of course, of course…I understand you two are on a rather tight schedule today," the attaché replied.

One magical blood test, two photographs, and ten minutes' time later, the meeting ended with everybody getting something. Harry got a _real_ Canadian/NAC passport that proved his dual-citizenship, the magical diplomat got a press release-bound picture of Harry (the one in front of the NAC flag, rather than the one taunting Dumbledore), and Hermione got a really thick packet of information on the North American Confederation's emigration and naturalization policies.

**oo00OO00oo**

_11:30am CET (10:30am GMT)  
Cortex Gaztelua  
Pyrenees Orientales, France_

Fleur's work assignment as stand-in for the future Lady of the estate required whirlwind inspections and sign-offs on the remodeling, repair, and refurbishment of what would soon be Lord Potter's rental property. Most of her time had been spent indoors, offering suggestions to a small army of house elves as they rushed to convert what had been a gutted small fortress into a comfortable home.

Both the fortress and the grounds that that fortress protected were known as "Cortex Gaztelua." The name was a mash-up of Latin and Basque, and roughly meant "Cork Fort." The estate sat two-thirds of the way up the eastern face of a small mountain. More importantly (and strategically), it sat on an intersection of three different magical ley lines, and enjoyed just the right altitude and microclimate for cultivating cork trees. It had been the wizards of the Roman Empire who had first discovered the location; the first structure built on the grounds garrisoned a small cohort of Roman hit-wizards. These magical soldiers guarded the cork trees that the Roman wizards had planted there, and maintained that vigil as those trees grew to become the best source within the (then) known world for magically-resistant potion bottle stoppers.

The designation didn't change as the Roman Empire expanded, and its wizards traveled to the four corners of the earth.

The current fortress had been built in the Twelfth Century on the ruins of the original Roman fort. The buttressed stone structure extended over an archway that housed the gates that controlled access to the magical cork grove. Not that there was much for those gates to protect, after the previous owner (in a futile effort to cover his debts) had decimated the grove by callously harvesting anything and everything that he could cut down, regardless of the long-term damage he was causing.

The stone archway divided the first level of the building into separate sections. Fleur was in the larger ground-level section, signing-off on the restorative work that had been done to the main entrance. The goblin who had demanded that signature grunted as he rolled up the contract. The six house-elves who had been working under that overseer's watchful eye (and whip) correctly interpreted that grunt and popped away before Fleur could thank them for their efforts. Not at all happy with how the goblin had treated his staff during the time she'd spent on the estate, the French witch had no intention of thanking him as he grabbed a bit of floo powder and walked into the flames of the fortress's two-way floo connection to the Marseilles office of Gringott's.

Fleur walked up the stairs to the next level, where large eastern-facing windows were high enough to look out beyond the rows of grape vines that were planted in front of the fortress. The view was expansive enough for her to see all the way down to the coastline, but Fleur's focus was on the ward line that sat in between the small vineyard and the sea. The cohort of hobgoblins that had been guarding the property since repossession was on the inside of the wards, watching as her Bill and his one-armed colleague Nick hurled one spell after another towards the ward line. Fleur could almost see the smile on her fiancé's face as his curses were all reflected away.

And then the bright white light of Albus Dumbledore's message patronus got in the way of Fleur seeing anything else for a few moments.

That she felt no compelling urge to obey the orders conveyed by the phoenix patronus was very reassuring. And exciting. And not the least bit inconvenient.

Fleur returned downstairs and walked out onto the grounds, heading towards the ward line with the intention of comparing notes (and the lack of compulsions) with her fiancé. She was met halfway by the cohort of hobgoblins, who were marching in formation back towards the main house. Bill and the other curse-breaker were walking at a more leisurely pace behind the warriors. Declaring his work assignments to be done, Nick the one-armed bartender kissed the French witch on both cheeks then continued on towards the fortress.

Bill was giving Fleur a much stronger kiss on the lips when a second patronus message arrived, and delivered the same summons to an emergency Order meeting that Fleur had received earlier. They then paused for a few moments to see if this message was any more compelling than the first. While they waited, Bill told Fleur that his ward scheme testing had been successful. Once they shut down the estate's floo connection (after Nick and the hobgoblins had departed) they could cross the property line and apparate back to Chateau Delacour. Fleur's work day would be done, while Bill's only other assigned task from Gringott's was to ensure that Harry made it to the meeting with his account manager at the French Ministry.

The couple then strolled arm-in-arm back to the fortress. As Bill shut down the floo connection, Fleur used a _Tempus_ charm to determine that Harry's meeting was more than two hours away. She then grabbed Bill's hand and started to drag him towards the stairs.

"Come with me," she said. "Your work may be done, but I have one more task to complete before we leave."

"What's that, Luv?"

Fleur smiled, as she guided her fiancé towards the master bedroom suite.

"I was charged with ensuring that all of the facilities would be to the Lady of the Estate's satisfaction, no?" she asked.

"Well, yes, but…"

"Then I need to determine that the master bath will satisfy Hermione," said Fleur.

Two facts sprung to Bill's mind as his French fiancée walked into the master bedroom's en suite, bent over the oversized tub, and reached for the faucet knobs. "Erm, Fleur…I don't think that we should…"

As water began to fill the tub the French witch turned to face her lover and unfastened the top button on the front of her robes.

"You do not want me to do a good job?" she pouted, as she unfastened the second button and exposed some lovely cleavage.

"Of course I do…it's just that we're still on the clock."

What does your mother's clock have to do with my work assignments?"

The third button came undone, opening the front of Fleur's robe wide enough to show that it was the only thing covering her torso

"It's just a saying," Bill said. "I just don't think it's a good idea for you to bathe on company time…especially when the company's managers adorn their office walls with short swords and battle axes."

The last button came undone, allowing Fleur to slip her robe off of her shoulders and drop to the marble-tiled floor. Now wearing only a pair of skimpy black knickers, she then asked, "What about sex?"

"What?"

Fleur turned towards the tub and bent down to test the water temperature. Nodding to herself, she then turned off the water supply and said, "I want to determine whether it is large enough for two people to shag comfortably."

Bill's eyes darted from Fleur's bum towards the tub.

"Why do…it's just as large as the shower we used this morning?"

"Are you certain?" Fleur asked. She stood up straight and pushed her knickers down low enough to step out of them.

"But the goblins…."

Fleur stepped into the tub and sat, allowing the water level to rise up to kiss the bottom of her breasts when she leaned her head back against the edge.

"The goblins will never know so long as your ward scheme is working as designed, no?" Fleur noted. She then spread her legs and lifted them out of the water so that her heels rested on the edges. Looking up towards her still clothed fiancé, Fleur dragged her fingernails up her inner thigh and declared, "So let this be an additional test."

Bill let out a whimper as his resolve crumbled.

"Oh, this is a test, alright," he whined.

**oo00OO00oo**

_11:00am GMT (noon CET)  
Headmaster's Office  
Hogwarts _

Fred and George Weasley, who _were_ subject to the oath-driven compulsions attached to their own patronus messages, dawdled as much as possible before reluctantly floo-traveling to Hogwarts for the emergency Order meeting. They fully expected to get an earful from their mother and/or get yanked around by their ear for whatever role she assumed they had played in whatever she was upset about at that particular moment. The twins were therefore shocked when almost the exact opposite occurred when they stepped out of the fireplace within Dumbledore's office.

"Oh, Fred! George! I'm so happy that you two are here and healthy!" Molly bawled, as she pulled her two sons into a combined hug.

Fred cocked an eyebrow as he pulled his face away from Molly's chest and asked, "Are you feeling okay, Mum?"

"Of course I'm okay. Nothing at all wrong with me," Molly said defensively.

The blush that formed on her cheeks and the way that she clamped her knees together suggested otherwise. Neither Fred nor George were going to press for details, however…especially once their father stepped up with a plausible explanation.

"Something is off with the family clock," he said. "Your mother doesn't trust what it's telling her."

Fred and George both leaned forward, hoping to steal a glimpse of the clock face that was tucked underneath one of Molly's arms. Dumbledore started the meeting before those hopes were realized.

"Thank you all for coming on such short notice," the Headmaster said. "Some of you have heard only partial accounts of what has transpired over the last few hours, and our investigation is ongoing, so I would ask that Alastor provide all of us with a short summary of the situation."

The peg-legged wizard stood and hobbled to the front of the group. "To sum up…Potter, Granger, Bill Weasley and his French bird have done a runner, covered their tracks, and messed with our ability to track them down. Oh, and Diggle is dead."

Dumbledore needed to cast a mild _Sonorus_ to be heard over the uproar.

"A few more details might be warranted, Alastor," he then said.

Moody nodded, and waited for the other Order members to quiet themselves before speaking again.

"Dedalus Diggle arrived for his overnight sentry duty at the Burrow at 6:00pm last night, relieving Shack and taking custody of Potter's invisibility cloak for the duration of his shift."

"At some point between 10:30 in the evening and 8:50am this morning, Potter, Hermione Granger, Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour ventured out beyond the Burrow's ward line. Within that same time frame, Molly Weasley's surveillance device was swapped out for a non-functional duplicate…"

"It's not a surveillance device, it's the Weasley family clock!" Molly insisted.

"Tomato, Tomatoh," Made-Eye quipped. "Someone also emptied out her howler stash."

Fred and George both looked as if Yule had come early, with a broken clock, pilfered howler paper, and their brother's escape tucked underneath the tree, all waiting to be unwrapped. They each began to mentally rehearse the supplications that would be offered to their older brother, the next time that they saw him.

Mad-Eye snorted when he spotted the twins's glee. Setting aside a snide comment, he continued with his narrative.

"Now Dung should have relieved Diggle and started his shift at 6am," the retired Auror noted. "At that point, Diggle should have brought the invisibility cloak back to the Burrow, and left it there for the next guard that Potter doesn't completely and understandably mistrust."

"Hey, there!" Dung complained. "I still say that I showed up at 6am, right on time!"

"If that's the case, then why didn't you raise the alarm when you couldn't find Diggle and let him know of that rather miraculous degree of promptness?" McGonagal snapped.

Mundungus shrugged. "I reckon'ed he just fell asleep under that cloak, and that's why I couldn't see him on the ward line when I showed up."

Mad-eye rolled his eyes (one clockwise, the other counter-clockwise).

"Bit of projection, Dung?" he asked. "Decided that it was a trend worth following, and that's why I found you curled up under that apple tree, dead to the world?"

The disheveled wizard shrugged.

"So where is Diggle, anyway?" he said.

"He's dead, you idiot…didn't you hear Mad-Eye just say that?" Tonks whined. "Maybe you got too many tobacco leaves stuffed up your ears?"

Dumbledore raised his voice. "Now, now, my friends…at this moment of crisis it is critical that we all pull together and work together to bring young Mister Potter back into the fold."

Severus Snape scowled, and shook his head in disgust. "I wonder where The-Boy-Who-Murdered dumped Diggle's body?"

"Please, Severus," said Dumbledore. "I ask that nobody leap to any premature conclusions about what transpired last night."

A low-pitched growl escaped from Remus Lupin's mouth as he glared at Snape and asked, "So, Headmaster…what's your attitude towards premature accusations?"

"Enough from the both of you," Molly snapped. "Nobody murdered anyone last night, right Alastor?"

The peg-legged wizard nodded his head. "I found Diggle dead in his bed this morning," he stated. "There was no sign of foul play, other than the fact that there was also no sign of Potter's cloak."

"So Potter killed Diggle for the cloak, then dumped the body in Diggle's flat," Snape reasoned.

"Of course he did," Tonks sneered. "And how exactly did Harry know where Diggle lived?"

Snape shrugged. "Okay, fine. Potter tortured Diggle until he gave up his home address, and then killed the stupid bastard."

"Torture?" Arthur asked. "What part of 'no sign of foul play' didn't you understand?"

"Where's the cloak, then?"

"Our focus must be on the location of Harry Potter, rather than his cloak," Dumbledore argued.

"That's easy," said Snape. "Potter is too inept to successfully run away on his own…he's wherever that Granger bint, the Veela and Bill Weasley brought him."

Dumbledore raised his voice above the protests.

"I would like to point out that none of the four appear to have packed for travel, as they left behind wardrobes filled with clothing."

"New robes can be bought easily enough," Snape countered.

"I also note that Miss Granger's familiar was spotted this morning at the Burrow. Any suggestion that she left without an intention to return would have to explain why she abandoned the half-kneazle."

"Where's the brat's owl, then?"

Dumbledore shrugged. "Delivering a letter, perhaps? Regardless, it is difficult for me to believe that William and Fleur actively supported Mr. Potter's escape…if, indeed, this is an escape attempt."

"Escape?" Fred asked George.

"Well at least he's calling it like it really is," the twin whispered.

"Why do you think that Fleur and Bill weren't involved?" Shacklebolt asked.

"Because of the oaths that they took when they formally joined the Order earlier this year," Dumbledore explained. "They swore on their magic to support the Order's goals and mission, and our main mission for these past several months has been to secure young Mr. Potter's safety."

Arthur nodded in agreement. "After all of the additions and improvements made to the Burrow's wards…the only place safer for Harry would be here at Hogwarts."

"Or Gringott's," Shacklebolt reasoned. "After all, that's where Bill and Fleur work, right?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Remember their oaths to the Order, as well as the fact that we have yet to determine which side the Goblin Nation has taken."

Kingsley shook his head. "Aren't those the same oaths that would have compelled them to at least contact you once this meeting was announced?"

"They may have not been in a position to respond…or even to receive the message," Dumbledore replied. "Recall that a fail-safe delay was added to the oaths to avoid Severus from receiving a patronus message at an inopportune time."

"Yeah, like when he's kissing the Dark Lord's arse," Fred whispered into George's ear.

"Could be that they can't respond because they're dead or worse…captured by Death Eaters," Mad-Eye noted.

Molly gasped at the suggestion and reflexively glanced at her clock. And then she remembered that she couldn't trust what the clock was showing and she cried twice as loudly as she would have otherwise.

Kingsley shook his head and asked, "So what do you think happened, Albus?"

Dumbledore stroked his beard as he considered the completeness of his response.

"I think that at present time, Mr. Potter is in good health and within a safe location, wherever that may be."

"How can you be so sure?" Molly asked.

The Headmaster held up his one good hand to ward off her verbal challenge.

"I know this to be true because I have devices that monitor those conditions, the same way that your family clock keeps you informed of your family's health and well-being."

"Yeah, but she said her clock doesn't work anymore," Dung noted.

"Nevertheless, my devices are working just fine, and they are beyond the reach of anyone wishing to meddle with their functions," said Dumbledore. "I can also report that the wards that protect Harry's family on Privet Drive are still at full strength, which would not be the case had Mr. Potter passed on."

Snape sneered, "So the brat is fat, happy and alive. I say we leave him that way and wash our hands of the bother."

"That will not be happening," said Dumbledore.

"So how does Harry's present health and well-being figure into your idea of what happened last night?" asked Lupin.

"Yes, yes…I was coming to that," Dumbledore said. "My preferred hypothesis, which I must say could well change as more information becomes available, is this…I suspect that Mr. Potter very recently discovered, quite probably with Miss Granger's assistance, that there were tracking charms placed on his person. Working under the mistaken assumption that these tracking charms had been applied by his enemies, Mr. Potter feared that his presence at the Burrow would put his friends and adopted family in harm's way. Harry and Miss Granger therefore decided to address the situation by removing the tracking charms from his person, then distributing these charms to various locations across Britain and beyond."

Kingsley scratched his bald head as he considered this proposal. He then asked, "So how do Diggle, Bill and Fleur fit into all of that?"

"Ah, well…I understand that poor Dedalus was found with an opened flask of heart medicine by his bedside. I suspect that he experienced a heart attack while on sentry duty. Once he realized that he needed that medication, Dedalus apparated home, but unfortunately died before either he could take the medication or before the medication could take effect. It goes without saying that Mr. Potter and Miss Granger would have had a far easier time crossing the ward line without an Order member monitoring that boundary."

"And Bill and Fleur?" Molly asked.

Dumbedore nodded.

"Fleur shared a bedroom with Miss Granger, did she not?" he asked. "It stands to reason that she was the one who discovered that the two teens had left the Burrow. She then woke Bill and the two of them went off in search of Mr. Potter and his friend."

"Why wouldn't they have let us know before they took off?" Arthur wondered.

The Headmaster replied, "You mentioned earlier today that Bill and Fleur have become good friends with Harry and Hermione…they may have wanted to bring them back home on their own, so as to limit any repercussions. There was, after all, a birthday party planned for today? Or perhaps they felt that time was of the essence."

"There wasn't enough time to wake Arthur and me, but there was time enough to empty my stationery cabinet?" Molly asked.

"That could have been Harry and Hermione's doing," offered Tonks. "Wasn't she on the receiving end of at least one of your howlers?"

Molly scoffed, "I doubt that they could have gotten past my security charms."

"I don't know…those two are pretty resourceful," said Lupin.

"I suppose they meddled with the clock as well, then?"

Arthur suggested, "Maybe Bill or Fleur altered the clock on their own, before they discovered that Harry and Hermione were missing. You know that neither was all that pleased with your latest changes."

Fred Weasley, who had been very busy trying not to smirk at all of the back-and-forth, spoke out about something that he did take issue with.

"Headmaster, you say that you suspect that Harry found tracking charms and assumed the worst…what specifically do you suspect? That there were tracking charms, or that Harry discovered the tracking charms that you know for a fact existed?"

"Fred Weasley!" Molly barked. "You will show the Headmaster proper respect!"

Dumbledore raised his one good hand as if to ward off Molly's volume.

"Now, now…it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask," he insisted. He turned towards Fred and said, "The latter is a more accurate characterization."

"You placed tracking charms on Harry?" George asked.

"I'm sure that he had a perfectly valid reason for doing so!" Molly snapped.

George Weasley was skeptical when Dumbledore announced his need for Order support in tracking down Harry's location.

"Wouldn't it be easier for whoever cast the tracking charm to track it down themselves?" he asked. "Thought that was how the bloody spell worked."

"Language!" Molly chided.

"It is nevertheless a valid observation," said Dumbledore. "The specific wand that is used to cast a tracking charm can be used to guide the spell caster's apparition to the targeted location. Unfortunately, this only works when there is a single charm to track down."

Mad-Eye Moody barked out a laugh. "No, it still works when more than one tracking charm is cast…only becomes a problem when the tracking charms are in different locations."

"Why's that?" Dung asked.

McGonagal let out a sigh. "Because the wand would guide you to two places at the same time and you'd splinch yourself, you daft git!"

"I assume that you've cast more than one tracking charm on the boy, Headmaster?" Kingsley asked.

Dumbledore nodded. "More than seventy, actually."

"SEVENTY?" several Order members exclaimed.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Tonks asked.

"Language, Nymphadora!" Molly barked.

"Oh, mind your own business," Tonks barked. "Not like you've got a hand with my name on it spinning around your surveillance device!"

"It's a clock, not a surveillance device!"

"If we can get back on point?" Kingsley asked. He turned to Dumbledore and said, "I think we're all interested in the logic behind that many trackers, Albus."

The Headmaster stroked his beard as he weighed the appropriate level of clarity in his response. His reluctant conclusion was that he would have to be far more straightforward than he wanted to be.

"It is fairly common knowledge that tracking charms can't be applied on living flesh," he eventually explained. "That knowledge is typically applied when a witch or wizard suspects that they might have been the target of a tracking charm."

"Yes, yes…we all know that it's standard policy to strip down naked to clear yourself of tracking charms," Mad-Eye said with a sigh. "It's a right pain in the arse to pop out my eye and unfasten my leg, but…."

"CONSTANT VIGILENCE!" Fred and George shouted in tandem.

"Damn right!" the retired auror said. "Of course, most witches and wizard are too stupid to do a complete check." Made-Eye turned to Dumbledore and asked, "More than seventy means you did more than his fingernails and toenails…you charmed his hair as well?"

The Headmaster shook his head. "Only hair, actually."

"You charmed his hair seventy different times?" Molly asked.

"No, I charmed seventy different strands of hair one time each," Dumbledore replied. "One needs to account for losses due to shedding…this, for example, explains the locations of the four tracking-charmed hairs that Arthur and I discovered this morning at the Burrow."

"What…the brat forgot to pack his hair brush?" Snape quipped.

"Not likely to find one of these on a hair brush," the Weasley Patriarch muttered.

"Arthur?" the Headmaster asked warily.

"What?" the red-haired wizard replied. "You think that they aren't going to figure it out for themselves if you're about to send us off to hunt these tracking charms down?"

"Oh, shite! He didn't!" George muttered.

"LANGUAGE!" Molly shouted.

"No, I think that accurately sums up this entire fiasco," Arthur told his wife.

"Oh my God!" Tonks gasped. "Please don't tell me that all of these charmed hairs are shorter and curlier than the ones growing out of Harry's head!"

Arthur snorted. "Would you rather hear that we found one hair buried under his bed linens, and another inside a pair of boxer shorts in his laundry bin?"

"What about the other two?" Fred asked.

"Never you mind, young man!" Molly hissed (not eager to disclose that a black hair had also been discovered within a small hidden shrine in her daughter's bedroom).

"Enough!" Dumbledore shouted. "These distracting conversations aren't helping us at all!"

"Unless anyone is interested in the truth," Remus muttered.

"And why do you doubt that the Headmaster wouldn't have told us that truth in regular order?" Molly spat.

"Past experience?" Tonks offered.

"I WILL HAVE ORDER!" Dumbledore thundered.

He waited a few seconds to ensure that he had everyone's complete attention.

"Harry Potter's safety is an end that justified these means!" he declared. "Yes, I applied more than seventy tracking charms to Mr. Potter's public hairs. But there were perfectly valid reasons for these decisions!"

The office sat silent for a few seconds, before Remus dared question the Headmaster.

"Are you going to share those reasons with us, Albus?" he asked. "Or are we to once again trust your infallibility?"

The Headmaster gritted his teeth, then gritted them some more when he realized that he needed the Order's cooperation more than their blind obedience.

"As Alastor already intimated, the fact that fingernails and strands of hair can hold a tracking charm is often overlooked. Clothes may be discarded, and a wand taken away, but Harry's hair and nails are going to stay with him."

"Right up to the point where he trims his nails or gets a haircut," Kingsley noted.

"Which is exactly why I avoided charming his fingernails or the hairs on his head," Dumbledore retorted. "According to my research, public hairs have a two to four-year average lifetime, which is much longer than other types of body hair."

Fred drew a laugh from his brother when he whispered into his ear.

"Something to share with the rest of us?" Molly asked.

Fred just shook his head. "Sorry, Mum, just asking George if he had ever had a talk with Harry about manscaping."

"What in Merlin's name is manscaping?" Arthur asked.

"You really don't want to know, Arthur," Tonks quipped.

Dumbledore walked over to the wall of headmaster portraits and pulled down his tracking charm map. He quickly explained what the map did, and the meaning of the dots that were bounding against its edges. He noted the absence of a spot hovering over Hermione Granger's hometown of Weybridge, then outlined his plan to dispatch members of the Order to each of the marked locations that were still within Magical Britain. Their goal was to search for any evidence that might lead them to Harry Potter's location.

"Kingsley?"

"Yes, Headmaster?"

"I want you to focus on the Midlands...there's a tracking charm in Worcestershire, and two more in Staffordshire."

"Where, specifically?" the Auror asked.

Dumbledore pressed the Elder Wand's tip against three dots on the map, and leaned forward so that he could read the fine print within the text boxes that popped up. He nodded to himself as he read out, "Flash Bottom, North Piddle, and Cockintake."

The laughter that erupted from the Order's ranks was echoed by the amused portraits hanging against the wall.

"You're having me on!" Tonks declared.

"I assure you that I am not," Dumbledore replied. "These are the locations of three of the trackers."

"But they can't be real places, can they Headmaster?" asked Molly.

"Of course they can, my good lady," Albus reassured her. "I once spent a delightful afternoon in Cockintake."

"A little too much information," Remus snickered.

Fred nodded. "I bet the locals bent over backwards to ensure that the visit was delightful."

"More likely bent forward," George quipped.

"I don't understand your meaning," said the Headmaster.

Shacklebolt shook his head dismissively. "I think what they're suggesting that Potter might be having a joke at our expense."

"How so?"

"By…well, let's see where are these other dots are located?"

Dumbledore nodded in agreement. "Mundungus, why don't you take care of the three tracking charms that have found homes in Ireland?" he suggested. The Headmaster then pressed his wand tip against those mapped dots and said, "That would be… the villages of Drumahoe, Ballsbridge, and Bastardstown."

"HA HA HA HA HA!"

Even Snape was finding it difficult not to snicker like a primary school lad.

"More evidence that the arrogant brat is trying to play with us," he declared.

Albus ignored his minion's opinion and pressed on.

"Fred and George?"

"Absolutely not!" Molly interjected. "I'm not letting either of my boys out of my sight until I get my clock sorted out."

"My apologies, Molly, but we are short members at the moment, and the Order's needs must take priority over your understandable concerns," Dumbledore declared.

"No!"

"I am afraid so," Albus replied. He turned towards Fred and George and said, "I need one of you to return to your new storefront in Diagon Alley, in case Mr. Potter tries to contact you there."

"And the other?" asked Arthur.

Dumbledore replied, "Out of deference to Molly's concerns, the other son will be assigned those locations closest to home, as it were." The aging wizard then found three dots located within the West Country and added, "Those locations being Shitterton, Scratchy Bottom and Crapstone."

Fred and George giggled the entire time that they tried to establish who got to pick their assignment with a game of rock-parchment-wand.

"Enough of these English audacities," McGonagall announced. "Just give me the Scottish locations and I'll be off."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Fair enough, Minerva…fair enough." He then turned towards the map, touched the four stationary dots located north of Hadrian's Line, and smiled.

"Off you go, then…to Barefolds, Boghead, and Bladda. And if he's not in any of those locations, then check out Orkney's Twatt."

And there was much laughing, and snickering, and frivolities.

The laughter only got louder when Tonks was sent off to Lick Fold, Titty Hill, and Nether Wallop, followed by Remus Lupin's dispatching to Fanny Barks, Bloody Bush, and Wet Wang. While Molly was allowed to return home in case Harry and Hermione did return there, Arthur was tasked with visiting Clap Hill, Pratt's Bottom and Thong. Mad-Eye volunteered to visit the Welsh locations (Pontarddulais, Llanfrynach, and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobw) that weren't as funny-sounding, but far less pronounceable. Snape insisted on being assigned the three locations that appeared to be the most likely to be Harry Potter's location, given that they were all in "normal" locations within Metropolitan London.

Aside from the dots that were bouncing against the map edges, the only remaining places to investigate were Hogwarts and Heathrow. Dumbledore suggested that Harry would at least be safe if he was hiding within Hogwarts, so he moved their present location to the bottom of a prioritized list. He told the others that he would find the four separate tracking charms in Heathrow, then (if need be) return to Hogwarts and work on expanding the margins of his Anglo-centric map.

A decision was made for the Order to reconvene later in the day to compare notes and take on new assignments. Molly volunteered to host that meeting at the Burrow. Most of the Order members had already been planning to be there to attend Harry's birthday party. While "the very naughty boy" wouldn't be getting his party after what he'd done (even if he was brought "home"), Molly had already bought the food and drink, and didn't want it to go to waste.

Fred and George thought their mum's comments about naughty Harry not getting his cake were funnier than any of the place names that were part of the Wild Hair Chase.

**oo00OO00oo**

_12:55pm CET (11:55am CET)  
Cortex Gaztelua_

Bill was doing a poor job of trying to beat down the content grin that was tugging at the corners of his lips.

"I can't believe that we just did that," he whined, as Fleur and he walked out the fortress's front door.

"And I can't believe that you are complaining about having fabulous sex with your fiancée," she countered.

"But the goblins…"

"The risk of being caught by them was just as thrilling as the thought of being caught by your mother, no?" Fleur asked.

"It's not that I _am_ complaining, mind you," said Bill. "It's just…I'm more afraid of their halberds than her howlers. And what's up with the water shags, by the way?"

"Is _that _a complaint?"

"Of course not," Bill countered. "Just curious, after getting our knees dirtied during yesterday's outdoor shags..."

Fleur giggled. "We are making the tour of elemental sex," she decided. "Yesterday was Earth Day, today is Water Day…"

"So tomorrow it's Air Day and broomstick sex?" Bill joked.

Fleur shook her head. "I do not wish to risk the splinters."

Bill let out a laugh as the couple crossed the ward line.

"You managed to avoid splinters last night, and if you ask me it sounds a lot safer than having sex on Fire Day."

Fleur squeezed her fiance's hand. "Really? You do know that I am a part-Veela, right?"

"I thought you only hurled fireballs when you are angry?" Bill asked.

The French witch gave her lover's hand another squeeze. "So the solution is for you not to anger me in bed, n'est pas?"

Bill responded to what he was going to assume was just a joke with some nervous laughter. That laughter carried into the ethereal plane as the couple apparated to Chateau Delacour.

**oo00OO00oo**

_12:05pm GMT (1:05pm CET)  
Charing Cross Road, London_

Severus Snape put a London cabbie's knowledge of "The Knowledge" to the test when he flagged down a taxi travelling down Charing Cross and climbed inside.

"Take me to Eric Clarke Lane," the potions master instructed.

"Eric Clarke Lane, Sir?" the cab driver asked politely. "Do you mean Clark Street in White Chapel?"

Snape glanced down at the piece of parchment in his hand and scowled.

"I meant exactly what I said, driver…Eric Clarke Lane."

"Sorry, Gov'nor…it's just that there isn't much call for that destination."

"Are you capable of transporting me to that street or not?"

"Certainly, Sir…it's a bit of a drive from here, but I'll get you there straightaway."

The Hogwarts potions master nodded curtly, then leaned back into the seat as the cab began to wind his way towards East London.

Most every other member of the Order of the Phoenix had flagged down the Knight Bus in Hogsmeade and bombarded Stan Shunpike with their odd and off-beat destinations. Severus Snape had no desire to suffer their company, and no stomach for the Knight Bus's mad-cap careening as it rocketed from one destination to the next. What he did have, however, was passing familiarity with Muggle methods of transportation, and a large roll of pound notes (courtesy of the headmaster's school slush fund). Which was why he had chosen to floo to the Leakey Cauldron, exit out the Muggle side onto Charing Cross road, and hail a Muggle taxi cab.

Snape knew that the taxi would be driven by a driver who was required to memorize the locations of 25,000 different streets within Metropolitan London, just to get his hack license. Eric Clarke Lane was located within the electoral area of Beckton in East London, and was one of the 25,000 street locations included within "The Knowledge," so after a half-hour long journey that covered roughly 15km the taxi driver turned off Royal Docks Road and politely asked his passenger where he would like to be dropped off.

Snape looked out the windows and rolled his eyes. The narrow two-lane paved road was bordered on either side by metal fences and unkempt vegetation. Looking through the gaps between the fence slats, the wizard saw ugly metal and concrete industrial buildings, electric lines, networks of above-ground metal pipes, and surface parking lots. But there were no breaks in the fencing, or visible points of access to these structures from the road that they were now on.

Lacking any more detailed location information from Dumbledore's tracking map, Snape ordered the driver to keep driving. The views didn't change over the next few hundred meters, until the lane ended at a T and the driver informed his passenger that they had just covered the entire length of Eric Clarke Lane.

Snape nodded, then cast the _Confundus_ charm that allowed him to skip out on paying the cab fare. It was a little risky to use magic in such a non-magical area, but the potions master reasoned that he would still need to use magic to track down Potter's pubes. And the Ministry's monitors were no more likely to dispatch aurors to investigate a handful of low-powered spells than they were to investigate just the one.

There was a rank smell in the air…a stench that was pungent even in comparison with some of the more noisome potions ingredients that Snape dealt with on a daily basis. So he didn't even wait for the taxi cab to turn the corner before he cast the detection charm that better refined the location of Harry Potter's pubic hair. Snape's wand tip jerked south, through a metal fence, and towards a low-walled partially-buried storage tank. With little thought or caution the Half-Blood Prince apparated towards the tank.

The magical tracking map that Albus Dumbledore had created to monitor Harry Potter's location was charmed to identify the closest Muggle street address. It was magical enough to keep track of new street constructions and street name changes, but not magical enough to know whether the closest Muggle street location was actually the most appropriate street location. Had it been, the map would have directed Snape to the front entrance of the Beckon Sewage Works, rather than to his present location on the far side of the 250-acre facility. Had Snape been directed towards the main entrance of the largest sewage treatment plant in Britain, he might have recognized the facility for what it was (and what it did), and been a bit more cautious about where he chose to use line-of-sight apparition. He also might have been a little more cautious about using apparition in the first place.

The apparition spell was developed with a certain number of built-in safety precautions. The spell wouldn't work, for example, if the landing zone was over water, or inside solid rock. But there were limits to the magical fail-safe mechanisms…while the spell wouldn't deposit a witch or wizard into the middle of a full coal car, it would allow that witch or wizard to apparate into the direct path of the locomotive that was pulling a coal-filled car down the tracks. The spell also wasn't smart enough to know whether the solid ground at the target site was solid enough to support a witch or wizard's weight. And this proved to be Snape's undoing when he apparated into one of the sewage plant's many settling tanks. This one tank was filled with 94% solids. But the solids were shite, and the shite wasn't nearly compact or dense enough to hold firm when the potions master popped onto the top of the pile.

Snape sank.

Snape stank.

**oo00OO00oo**

**A/N2: **If you can believe what I read on the internet, all of the tracker locations in this chapter are real life places. Also, the pet name "Gabby-Cat" really is a pet's name…the standard poodle that my family adopted a few years' back came with the name Gabrielle. That wasn't going to fly in our house, so it was shortened to "Gabby." That she has a tendency to act more feline than canine as she lounges about the house all day acting as if she owns the place earned her the "Gabby-Cat" nickname (at least when I'm lovingly addressing her).


	15. Chapter 15: Joyeux anniversaire (Part 2)

**A Boon for Bill  
**a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: **Manic-mode writing and a runaway plot turned a two-part chapter into three parts (and counting). Might not have been that way had the response to the Snape-bashing (and dunking) not been so favorable. So it continues in this chapter, and almost overshadows the boon granting and present unwrapping that is nominally the climax of the story. Thanks to alix33 for some feedback on plot elements in the split-off back end that will become Chapter 16.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc. , etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 15: **_**Joyeux anniversaire (Part 2)**_

_12:40 GMT (1:40pm CET)  
Ministry of Magic  
Department of Magical Surveillance and Security  
_

The Big Board monitors were still laughing about the reports of spell casting in Titty Hill and Shitterton when the Ministry's magical surveillance network identified the latest place where magic was being used in a primarily Muggle area. The flashing point on the wall-sized map of the British Isles was sitting somewhere in East London, but the map's scale was too large to pinpoint a more exact location. That level of detail was provided within the piece of parchment that flew out of a slot at the bottom of the monitoring device.

"Hey Rookie, it's your turn!" one of the monitors noted.

The newest member of the team levitated the piece of parchment onto his desk and chuckled.

"It's a detect magic spell in Mymum Squim," he stated with a straight face.

One of the others asked, "Why would anyone want to look for magic in Mymum Squim?"

"Why indeed?" the rookie monitor asked….just before he broke out in laughter. This laughter kept the new employee from noticing that the auto-correcting parchment in his hands had flashed white, indicating that an update had been made.

His shift supervisor noticed, however, and was not amused by the lack of attention.

"Davis!" she barked. "Take another look at that report!"

The rookie monitor looked down at the parchment, then looked back over his shoulder towards his supervisor and winced.

"Sorry, Mum,"" he replied. "It's more of the same, in a place called Beckton."

"Beckton?" the supervisor asked.

"East London, Mum."

"I know where Beckton is, Mr. Davis," the shift leader spat. "Just read off the full list of spells cast."

"Yes, Mum," Davis replied. "The initial report was for a _Confundus_, a detection charm, and an Apparition jump. The update just added three _Scourgify_ spells, two laundering charms, a breath freshening charm, an _Accio_, and a second Apparition jump."

The shift supervisor snorted, and shook her head.

"And so ends another shitty treasure hunt," she declared. "Put it in the 'No Action' pile and move on."

"Yes, Mum."

"Oh, and Davis? You can count on spending the rest of your probationary period working the graveyard shift."

"Yes, Mum. Sorry again, Mum."

The slightly confused but highly discouraged monitor turned back towards his desk top and filed the parchment in the appropriate out box.

The wizard manning the adjacent desk leaned over and said, "Hey Rook, you sure picked a fine time to forget your place."

"Don't I know it," the younger wizard sighed. "So what's the story with the No Action? Seems like a lot of magic being done a fair distance from any magical area."

"We've seen it a few times before," the older wizard replied. "Beckton is where the Muggles dump their chamber pots."

"So when she said _shitty treasure hunt_ she was being literal?" the rookie asked.

Anomalous magic lit up Metropolitan Manchester on the Big Board, limiting the older wizard's reply to a nod of the head as he levitated the new report into his hands.

"Oh, Christ…bit early, isn't it?" he muttered.

His supervisor glanced at the Big Board, noted the flashing dot's location, and asked, "Rochdale?"

"Yes, Mum, 133 Tweedale Street," the monitor reported. "Sounds like a party… three lubrication charms this time."

"Just file it and move on."

"Yes, Mum," the monitor said. "So how much longer before the Big Board realizes that there's a magic wand at that Muggle street address?"

"Not soon enough, in my opinion."

"Yes, Mum."

The shift supervisor shook her head in disgust. She had dispatched a response team to that Muggle address three weeks previous. That response team had caught a prominent member of the Wizengamot in bed with the Muggle homeowner, taking ten inches of Muggle up his arse. That led to her to taking it up the bum (figuratively, but no less painfully) when that Wizengamot member had complained to her boss.

The Board lit up a new location in the Orkney Islands, and a third monitor grabbed the latest piece of parchment and scanned its contents. The supervisor looked down from her desk and asked, "Anything, Michaelson?"

"It's Twatt, Mum," he replied.

"Michaelson!" the supervisor bellowed. "Do we need to have another little chat about appropriate language in the workplace?"

"No, Mum," the wizard said defensively. "Somebody really is checking out Twatt."

"Let me see that!"

"Yes, Mum," the monitor replied. He nervously walked up to the supervisor's station and gave her the parchment. The supervisor read what was written, then let out a deep breath.

"Listen up, everybody," she said. "You might think that these reports are all just another prank, courtesy of the Weasley Twins."

"Exactly what I think," muttered the monitor who was standing next to her.

"But we can't afford to assume the obvious after that bridge collapse, or the giant attack," the supervisor declared. "Multiple uses the same detection spell, all being cast within the span of an hour at different locations with naughty-sounding names….could easily be diversions. Or maybe a way of getting us to shut down the Big Board to check for malfunctions just before a massive Death Eater attack takes place."

"I could see that," one of the monitors whispered.

"So we aren't going to fall for their tricks!" the supervisor declared. "Quit acting like seven-year old boys tittering over a lad rag! Ignore the locations, and focus in on the spells that are being cast! There's something big afoot, and we're going to spot it!"

"Yes, Mum!" the monitors all replied.

The supervisor's words were fresh in the youngest monitor's mind when it was his turn to catch a report a few minutes later.

"Bloody Hell!" he hissed

"What?" his colleague asked.

"It's an apparition, some transfigurations, and a couple of Point Me's."

"Just those spells?"

"Yeah."

"Fit's the pattern, and nothing too lethal…so what's the problem?"

The rookie sighed. "The problem is that Boss Lady told us to ignore the locations."

"So?"

"So the location is Heathrow Airport."

"Ah," the older wizard said. He stood up from his desk and held out his hand. "Right, then…give it here."

After the new monitor complied with the request, his colleague walked up to the shift supervisor's desk and placed the parchment on her desk. The "open office" privacy charm surrounding the supervisor's work area kept the newbie from hearing the short conversation that followed.

"Nice catch," the Board monitor said, once he returned to his desk. "She's got a close-up of Heathrow locked in on her desk monitor, and has put the backup response teams on alert."

"Good," the rookie replied.

"You're out of her krup house, as well," his colleague added.

"Even better…does that mean I won't have to do graveyard shift for the next six months?"

The older wizard shrugged. "Probably…as long as you avoid giggling the next time that a report comes in from Fanny Squirt or Todgertown."

"Are those real places?"

The older wizard shrugged a second time. "After what we've seen the past hour? Wouldn't be surprised if they were."

**oo00OO00oo**

_Terminal 3, Heathrow Airport_

A scowl formed on Albus Dumbledore's face when his _Confundus_ spell couldn't convince the Qantas gate agent that he needed to board the Sydney-bound 747 that had just pushed back from the gate. He decided that the authoritative Muggle was unique, and possessed some innate resistance to his magic-enhanced suggestions. Little did he realize that being able to completely resist this kind of desperate passenger plea was a job requirement for each and every Muggle gate agent working within the terminal.

The agent's suspicions were raised when Dumbledore wasn't able to immediately produce a credible ticket and passport for rebooking purposes. The thought of casting an _Imperio_ curse crossed the Headmaster's mind, before he decided that there were simpler and far less noticeable ways to stop Harry Potter (or at least stop one of his pubic hairs) from traveling to Australia.

Smart enough and observant enough to know there would be trouble if he tried to magically unlock one of the ramp access doors or vanish the glass window that looked out onto the tarmac, Dumbledore slipped into the nearest men's room, locked himself within a stall, cast the ever-handy Notice-me-not charm, and apparated directly onto the ramp.

The red-tailed jumbo jet had turned the corner and was disappearing from view by the time that Dumbledore reappeared outside. He quickly drew out his wand, took aim, and cast a long-distance piercing hex towards the nearest landing gear tire. Not having a firm idea of the rubber tire's puncture resistance, Dumbledore overpowered the spell just enough to ensure the job was done. This was enough power for the magical projectile to travel not only through the targeted tire, but through the tire directly next to it, as well as through both of the rear tires on the bogie on the other side of the fuselage.

The pilot's reaction was almost as fast as his airplane's alarm system. It was all-but impossible for four tires to go flat all at the same time…especially when the tires immediately in front of them retained nominal air pressure. The easiest explanation was that somebody positioned perpendicular to the airplane had just shot a bullet through the tires.

This was also the scariest explanation, and it took a bit of doing for the pilot to calmly relay what had happened to the control tower.

Dumbledore was pleased to see the jumbo jet come to a full stop. He was less enthusiastic about the wailing alarm horns, or the Muggle Auror vehicles that were speeding towards the area. And he didn't at all care to hear the distinct cracks of more than twenty different Apparitions, all linked to the arrival of Auror teams that had been dispatched by the Ministry's Department of Magical Surveillance and Security_._

Discretion was the better part of valor, even when you were the most powerful wizard in the world (at least in your own mind). Dumbledore activated an emergency portkey that quickly and safely carried him away from the scene.

He landed on his feet, in his Hogwarts office, directly in front of the tracking map that he had modelled after the Ministry's Big Board. There were less spots on that map, after Order members had (presumably) retrieved and destroyed individual hairs at some of the assigned locations. But plenty more remained, and at least three additional spots were bouncing off the edge of the map.

The aging wizard thought about the spot that still hovered over Heathrow. He wondered how long it would take for the airplane linked to that spot to get off the ground and start towards its destination. Dumbledore's eyes then shifted beyond the frame to the office wall upon which that frame hung. And he wondered whether there would be enough wall space to accommodate an enlarged tracking map, drawn at the same scale, that would be big enough to extend Down Under.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour_

Fleur found her mother out on the grounds of family's seaside estate, sharing a cool drink with Hermione's mum as they watched Hermione's father hit golf balls out into the sea. Apolline Delacour smiled when she spotted her older daughter, and called for her to join them. Roger's attention shifted from the flight path of his latest drive over towards the three women. He smiled, tipped the brim of his visor towards Fleur, then turned his attention towards the face of his golf club, and to the house elf caddy standing next to his golf bag.

Fleur's gaze shifted from Hermione's dad to her mother's leg-baring cleavage-showing sundress. She shook her head in slight disbelief at the amount of exposed skin on display, then said, "Emily, I am impressed by your husband's strength of focus in the face of Maman's…distractions."

The Muggle woman acknowledged the observation with a thin grin.

"We just had to find a stronger distraction," she replied. "Golf is my husband's mistress."

Fleur frowned. "But I thought that Monty Python was his greatest love?"

Apolline arched an eyebrow, and asked, "Your husband has a male lover? How interesting."

Emily's explanation about Monty Python not actually being a real person caused Apolline to break out into laughter that was loud enough to mess up Roger's backswing.

He waved off the French witch's apology, then addressed the charmed golf ball that had magically reappeared on his golf tee.

Mrs. Delacour reached across the patio table and covered Emily's hand.

"It is the same with politics for my Paul," the other wife noted. "He would spend less time away from home if he had a real mistress."

"Probably spend less money on her as well," Emily agreed.

"We are very much alike, I think," Apolline noted. "Perhaps we should not be surprised that our daughters have become such good friends?"

"I think you are right."

With this agreement in hand, the French witch turned towards her daughter and asked, "So where have you been, my little flower? We were beginning to worry about you and your beau."

"Everything is fine, Maman," Fleur insisted. "Papa's valet is helping Bill dress for the meeting.

"Dare I ask who is helping dress Harry?" asked Hermione's mother.

Fleur laughed. "He is also with Papa's valet, Mrs. Granger," she insisted. "And Papa's valet is not shy about limiting…distractions…while he goes about his work."

"Bernie kicked you out of the dressing room as well, ma Cherie?" Apolline teased.

"But of course," Fleur said matter-of-factly.

"So I have him to thank for finally allowing me a bit of time with my daughter," her mother said with smile. "Where are Hermione and Gabrielle, then?"

"In the little terror's bedroom," Fleur replied. "Gabby wanted her Alpha's help dressing for the beach."

Emma chuckled. "I guess it's only fair, we found Gabrielle helping Hermione nap just after lunch."

"Really?" Fleur asked. She yawned, and said, "A nap sounds nice…perhaps I will take one on the beach, while Bill and Harry are at their meeting."

"You wouldn't rather wait until Bill could help you nap?" her mother teased.

Fleur shook her head. "If the meeting goes as planned, my fiancé and I will have better things to do than to nap."

"Even more sex?" Apolline asked with a tinge of surprise. "My lord, Fleur, it is going to fall off if you keeping riding him at this rate!"

"Maman!" Fleur said in faux shock. "You know that we practice safe sex…there is no danger of Bill's penis falling off."

"So what is the danger of his penis being rubbed raw from overuse?" Apolline countered.

Fleur shrugged. "There are magical salves for that, no?"

Mother and daughter shared some giggles, before the older witch turned towards Emily and said, "I must apologize…you must think our conversation scandalous!"

The Muggle dentist thought about some of the explicit discussions that _she_ had shared with her daughter earlier that Summer, and shook her head.

"Please, there is no need to apologize…I think that it is wonderful that your daughter is able to speak of these things with you."

"But, still…"

Emily reached out and covered her hostess's hand. "I can only hope that Hermione will continue to feel the same way towards me now that her relationship with her boyfriend has…matured."

Hermione's mum then looked up at Fleur and added, "And I must thank you for being so supportive of my daughter these past weeks, when I couldn't be there for her."

"It was my pleasure, Emily," Fleur said brightly. "I love Hermione like the sister that I never had."

"Fleur!" her mother chided. "You never had a sister?"

"Not one who is close enough in age for us to talk freely about boys and their broomsticks," Fleur countered. "No matter what little Gabrielle thinks!"

A triumphant shout interrupted the conversation. The women turned towards the source and watched in amusement as Roger Granger dropped to one knee and hugged his house elf caddy.

"Finally, Emily…a three-hundred yard drive!" he joyfully called out. "I LOVE MAGIC!"

Hermione's mum couldn't help but shake her head.

"Said the same thing this morning in the shower," she noted. "But if it keeps him happily distracted…"

Fleur nodded in agreement as she cast a _Tempus_ charm. "Harry and Bill must soon leave for the Ministry," she noted. "Shall we go see them off?"

"You go two go on," said Apolline. "I will stay and make sure that Emily's husband does not over exert himself within the arms of his mistress."

Hermione's mum shook her head as she rose from her chair. "Are you sure? He has twelve more clubs in that golf bag…you might be here a while."

Apolline smiled. "Let him tire himself…then maybe it will be easier for the golf clubs to magically disappear once you and your husband join your daughter up in the mountains."

Fleur chuckled. "A man without his mistress…what would he do with all of the extra time?"

Emily responded by coyly asking about the efficacy of magical salves on Muggle penises.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Ministère des Affaires gobelin  
__Ministère Français De La Magie, Paris__  
_

The lengthy meeting agenda and the desire of everyone involved to get through that agenda made for short introductions once Bill and Harry arrived at the French ministry and entered the treaty room. There was a French arbitrator on hand to make sure that the two sides didn't come to blows or draw wands. This required all of the meeting participants to check their wands and weapons into separate lockers that were built into one wall. Harry only had his wand to store, which gave him lots of time to stare slack-jawed at his account manager's secretary as she pulled one hand weapon after another out from underneath her dress.

Once the arbiter was satisfied that the room was safe and secured, he invited the two parties to take seats at the treaty table. Chokebar and his secretary Malice moved to one side of the table while Harry sat down on the opposite side. Bill Weasley hesitated for a moment before deciding to join his Gringotts co-workers on their side of the table. This generated a few raised eyebrows, but no questions; Harry and Bill had talked about this action in advance of the meeting, and the goblins were focused on actions more than symbolic gestures.

With little fanfare and even less instruction, Chokebar pushed a small jewelry box across the table. Harry opened the box and removed an oversized gold ring.

"So what do I have to do with this?" he asked.

"Third finger of his right hand," Chokebar replied tersely.

"No statement to make, or anything like that?"

The account manager chuckled. "Oh, no worries, Mr. Potter. If the ring determines you lacking as Head of House, it will definitely make a statement."

Harry turned towards Bill, who gave him a reassuring nod of the head. The younger wizard took a deep breath, and slipped the Potter Head of House ring onto the indicated finger. That the ring fit perfectly, without need for any magical type of resizing, was probably just another example of goblin planning and information gathering. That the ring seemed to accept him as Head of House was reassuring. That there was no blinding light or rush of knowledge or power surge within Harry's body was almost anticlimactic, given all of the trouble that both sides of the treaty table had gone to reach that point.

The head of house Potter looked across the table towards Bill and asked, "So that's it, then?"

Chokebar his account manager let out a short breath. "That was all that was required to claim your lordship, Lord Potter. It certainly wasn't the last item on our agreed-upon meeting agenda."

"Right," said Harry. He looked down at the agenda in front of him and asked "So now it's time for me to conduct some family business?"

The French arbitrator shrugged. Chokebar nodded. Malice, his secretary, just sat there like the quiet, subservient secretary that she was supposed to be (at least in public). Bill said, "Sounds good to me," and rose from his chair.

When Harry stood and turned towards the red-haired wizard, Bill dropped to one knee.

"What business bring you before the House of Potter?" the new lord asked.

Bill bowed his head, held his clamped hands out, and replied, "I wish to swear fealty, milord."

Harry nodded as he covered Bill's hands with his own, making certain that his Head of House ring was in contact with Bill's skin. Then he winced, realizing that he'd forgotten his next line from the script that they'd drawn up for the occasion. Hoping for the best, Harry released a breath and said, "Erm…well…go on, then."

Bill couldn't stop himself from looking up at Harry and cracking a smile. The smile stayed on his face as he declared his oath.

"I, William of the House of Weasley, do become your liege man of life and limb. My wand, my trust and my truth I will bear unto you to live among and die against all manner of beast and beings."

The younger wizard standing in front of Bill nodded, and replied, "I, Harry, Head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter, do accept William of the House of Weasley into service as my liege man. By the grace of God, Her Majesty the Queen, and all that is magical, within this world and the next. So Mote it Be."

An even wider grin formed on Bill's face as he rose to pull Harry into a manly hug. The younger wizard pushed him off and said, "Let's get to the good part, liege man."

Bill lowered his gaze and subserviently groveled, "Yes, milord."

Harry shook his head and sighed. "William of House Weasley, bring you business before your liege lord?"

"Please, milord, I ask that you grant me a boon."

"A boon, you say?" Harry asked (intentionally going off-script). "Not one minute into my service, and already you're asking for favors?"

Bill cleared his throat and said, "Erm…yes, milord."

"Right then, a boon Bill shall have," Harry quipped. "For loyal service, I grant you….a shrubbery."

Bill's head jerked up and asked. "What?"

Harry chuckled, "Nah, just messing with you. Do you have something specific in mind?"

The older wizard sighed. "I humbly beseech milord to convey to me as a boon any and all claims, favors, and life-debts that he may hold over Fleur Delacour."

"Hmmm," said Harry, as he scratched his chin. "Have to think about this…oh, alright then." As he grinned from ear-to-ear, Harry placed a hand on Bill's shoulder and said, "I grant the boon that you have requested. So Mote it Be."

The teen-aged wizard pulled his hand free from Bill's shoulder and asked, "So now what?"

Bill rose from the floor and said, "Now I pull you into a manly hug and say thank you, over and over again."

Harry reached out and hugged Bill first. "One thank you and one hug is enough, Mate…so long as you promise to help me convince Gabby that she's not boon-eligible too."

"Fair enough," said Bill. He slapped Harry on the back, and then turned towards the goblins sitting on the other side of the table.

"Senior Account Manager Chokebar, in light of my service to the House of Potter, I must regretfully inform you that I can no longer continue my employment with Gringott's under the previously agreed upon terms and conditions."

The goblin shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Duly noted, Weasley. So take a seat next your new liege lord, and if there's time at the end of the meeting maybe we can start negotiating a new employment contract."

"Thanks for understanding," Bill replied, as he sat down opposite the two goblins.

That Bill could still provide Gringott's with some valuable service as Harry's liege man was then proven over the next ten minutes, as he guided the new head of House Potter through the signing of a legal will and the new financial services agreement that continued to offer the goblins a massive profit incentive as they managed his accounts.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Inner Circle Road, Regent's Park  
London_

The most annoying thing about Severus Snape's second assigned location within the Order of the Phoenix's Wild Hair Chase was the number of potential street addresses along the road that bordered Regent's Park in Central London. Almost as annoying was the cab driver's initial refusal to allow Snape into his vehicle, due to the residual stench that had resisted his _Scourgify_ spells and laundering charms. It took a well-crafted _Confundus_ to convince this second cabbie that he was the source of the dung bomb equivalent, and to be so apologetic about the spell that he offered Snape a free ride to his destination.

Two laps around Regent's Park along Inner Circle Road were needed to nail down the target location to a spot within the very same zoo where Harry Potter had liberated a snake several years previous. Snape needed to cast an overpowered Notice-me-not charm to avoid getting caught as he jumped over the admissions gate and entered the zoo's grounds. The spell's effect wasn't strong enough to neutralize the stink, however, which led to a series of encounters that even a dour potions master couldn't help but find amusing…arguments broke out, dirty looks were exchanged and vehement denials were made as he passed by tourists who were less interested in the exhibits than in arguing over who within the crowd had just released a most outrageous fart.

Detection charms brought Snape into Tiger Territory, and zeroed in on one specific Sumatran tiger within the recently refurbished exhibit. The potions master considered magical cross-breeding within the tiger's ancestry, but realized that he wasn't close enough to cast the complex diagnostic spell that would identify the beast as a magical potions ingredient.

Snape's stunning spell left other visitors wondering why the tiger had suddenly decided to plop down for a nap. A short line-of-sight apparition brought the noisome wizard alongside the tiger. He cast the spell that identified the two-meter long male cat as 100% non-magical. This got him excited, and this excitement grew when point-blank detection spells isolated something magical within the tiger's gut.

Visions of Potter being mauled, dismembered and digested danced within the delighted wizard's head as he considered the possibility of his nemesis' demise. A quick notice-me-not charm applied to the stunned tiger allowed Snape to transfigure it into a finger-sized plastic toy without raising the suspicions of the zoo visitors on the other side of the fencing. He then placed the toy into his bag, and grabbed hold of his wand with the intention of apparating back to Hogsmeade.

Focusing in on the three D's, he didn't notice the stealthy approach of the transfigured tiger's mate. While she couldn't "notice" Snape due to the notice-me-not charm, her well-developed sense of smell made her even more irritated by the residual sewage stink than the human zoo patrons. And she expressed that irritation by a very load roar that disrupted the intruder's concentration.

Snape flinched.

Snape splinched.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Ministère des Affaires gobelin  
__Ministère Français De La Magie, Paris__  
_

With the signed will and financial services agreements safely tucked away into his briefcase, Chokebar pushed a thick ledger across the Treaty Table towards Harry.

"Here is the latest accounting for House Potter."

The young lord looked at the ledger and arched an eyebrow. "That's a lot thicker than the statement I reviewed last month."

His Account Manager nodded. "Until now, we were unable to provide a complete accounting of your house's financial and legal status. You now have full access to the records of all of the various vaults, real estate holdings, titles, outstanding contracts and philanthropic responsibilities held by House Potter"

"All of my vaults and holdings?" Harry asked. "Or just the accounts that Gringott's is managing?"

Chokebar tried not to wince. "We are the exclusive estate managers for all of your land holdings, including those in North America. But as for other vaults….well, Gorechunk's would rather shed our blood than share their account ledgers with us."

"Fair to say that the same attitude applies in reverse," Bill noted.

Chokebar shrugged. "We could send one of our corporate raiding parties over there to try to obtain that financial information, but that would entail spilt blood and some hefty account fees. From your perspective, Lord Potter, it would be far cheaper and simpler for you to request an accounting in person. And to that end…."

The goblin account manager gave a nod to his secretary, who reached under her skirt and pulled out a foot-long knee-hockey stick. Bill wondered why the stick hadn't been considered a potential weapon. Harry wondered where the female goblin had been hiding the stick. Chokebar's comment answered neither question.

"That's an authorized reusable portkey good for round-trip travel between Magical France and your island in Canada," he stated. "Until they rebuild the Ottawa branch, the closest Gorechunk's office to your island is in Montreal."

Bill noticed the gleam in the goblin's eye when he mentioned the Ottawa branch. He asked if Chokebar had ever made a friendly or not-so-friendly visit to that Gorechunk's location back in his army days. The account manager grinned, and said that was a story for another day. He then asked Harry if there were any changes that he wanted to make to his portfolio now that he had unfettered command of his accounts. The teen-aged wizard chuckled as he pulled a piece of parchment from his robe pocket and pushed it across the table.

"These instructions are just based on the summary statement," Harry noted. "We'll likely want to modify that list once we've reviewed the complete ledger. But with that said…do you have any immediate comments on that list…things that we might want to act on today, rather than next week?"

Chokebar quickly scanned the list.

"None of these appear to require immediate actions," Chokebar concluded. "But if you would allow me to reserve a final answer until we do a more detailed review?"

"Sure," said Harry. "Just don't take too long…we don't know how much time I'll have before Dumbledore tries to nullify my emancipation and Lordship at the Wizengamot."

"You'll have our analysis by tomorrow morning, at the latest," the goblin promised. "And as for retaining your newly-claimed control…Dumbledore can only challenge your rights as a British citizen under British law."

Harry arched his eyebrow. "Are you talking about my Canadian citizenship?"

Chokebar nodded. "It would be your associated rights as a magical citizen of the North American Confederation, but yes."

Bill frowned. "I thought that the Confederation didn't recognize British noble titles?"

"They don't," Chokebar replied. He pointed to the list and added, "But these are financial instructions, not royal proclamations. As the age of majority within the NAC is sixteen, instead of seventeen, the loss of noble title wouldn't trigger the loss of standing as an adult wizard."

Harry nodded in understanding. "So now that I've got a liegeman and granted a boon…is there anything else that Lord Potter should attend to before that title is challenged?"

Chokebar snorted and nodded his head. "There is an unbonded house elf that has been quite persistent in his attempts to attach himself to House Potter. And while any adult with the means can bind a house elf to their own individual family, only Lord Potter is capable of binding a house elf into serving the House as a whole."

"Let me guess…his name is Dobby?" Harry asked.

His account manager nodded. "Quite an energetic little fellow, and someone who provided no small amount of support last evening in the dispersing of your tracking charms."

Harry chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then shook his head.

"Let me check with the Missus on that one, and I'll get back to you."

The teen-aged wizard thought that his response might get a laugh out of his account manager. What he got instead was agreement.

"That would seem the most prudent course of action," Chokebar noted. "Especially given her social causes."

Harry wondered just how much Gringott's knew about Hermione, then recalled just how detailed their surveillance effort was at the Burrow and decided that they might know more about her than he did.

"Shall we move on to the next item of business?" Chokebar suggested.

Harry looked down at his copy of the agenda, and saw that the next item involved House Black. He asked if Chokebar and Bill would once again provide reassurance that he wouldn't drop dead or (worse) be forced into marry Pansy Parkinson if he slipped the Black Head of House ring onto his finger. The Potter account manager told the teen-aged wizard that he had been authorized by the Board of Auditors to offer a rare lineage test that would identify all of his House associations. When Harry agreed to the test, Chokebar asked the French arbitrator to complete the necessary ritual, using the goblin-forged dagger that the account manager had surrendered at the start of the meeting. The arbiter agreed, and (after checking the dagger for poisons and curses) used the dagger point to cut Harry's finger. The drawn blood dripped onto special goblin-charmed parchment, forming a red puddle that eventually spread out to form Gobbledygook words and sentences.

As a trust-building exercise, Chokebar asked Harry's liegeman to provide the translation into English. The account manager wasn't at all surprised to hear that Harry was eligible to claim leadership of House Black. He had also correctly predicted that his client had rights as Head of House Peverell, and had the rings and ledgers on hand for those houses. But it was the final affiliation that left the goblin gobsmacked…almost as gobsmacked as his client.

"Shite!" Harry hissed. "So I really was the Heir of Slytherin all along?"

Bill didn't know what to say. Neither did Chokebar.

"How could that be?" Harry whined.

"I am sorry, but I don't really know," Chokebar admitted. "Perhaps there might be some clues within the Slytherin ledger?"

Harry shook his head. "But I wouldn't have access to that ledger unless I first claimed the title, right?"

"You might not have access, but I would," Chokebar replied. He pulled his watch out from his vest pocket and checked the time. "I could send my secretary back to London to retrieve that ledger, but she would not likely return until after the scheduled end of this meeting. I would be more than willing to extend the meeting length, if other parties agreed. The other option is to address the issue during a future meeting."

"Well I damn sure don't want this hanging over my head," Harry replied. He turned towards the French arbitrator, who replied with a Gaullic shrug.

"I am getting paid by the hour, and certainly have nothing as interesting as this to do the rest of the afternoon."

Malice was dispatched to the trans-Channel goblin tunnel sforthwith.

The arbitrator asked if the two parties wanted to take a brief recess for a breath of fresh air. Chokebar muttered a snarky comment about his preference for stale underground air, but was otherwise amenable to a break. Harry was all for the idea, but had no chance to take in any fresh air…at least not beyond the breath freshening charm that his liege man provided after he rushed to the loo and lost his lunch.

**oo00OO00oo**

_24 Grosvenor Square, London_

The U.S. Marines snapped to attention when Billy Bucktooth came through the secret tunnel that connected MacDonald House (on the east side of Grosvenor Square) to the United States Embassy (located on the west). The full-blooded Iroquois sighed, and gently reminded the two American guards that they were assuming his identify in advance of confirming that identify, and that they wouldn't normally accord that level of respect to a real mid-level embassy official…especially when that official was officially attached to the Canadian High Commission, rather than their own embassy.

The two Marines remained at ramrod straight attention. While they knew what Bucktooth had stated was true, they also had no doubt that the wizard standing before them was in charge of magical security operations for the all of the embassies, consulates, and missions in London that were staffed by the twenty-three Muggle governments whose jurisdictions lay within the North American Confederation. And if that wasn't enough reason to give their respect, they also knew him to be the wizard who had single-handedly de-activated the radioactive dirty bomb that had been planted by Muggle terrorists just outside of the U.S. Embassy, some five years previous.

Bucktooth had more pressing issues to attend to than the body language of his sentinels, so he drew his wand and offered it butt-end first to the nearest Marine. The soldier took the wand, placed it within a velvet-lined rune-covered box, and closed the box. The wand was returned to Bucktooth once that box magically confirmed that it was his. The NAC commander then provided the appropriate password (that password being a modified _Fidelius_-charmed secret, designed to mitigate the risk of polyjuice). Once that was accepted, he moved on to the third level of security…a retinal scanner that provided Muggle confirmation of his identity. This successful scan opened a doorway into the secret fifth underground level of the United States Embassy (located under the almost-as-secret fourth sublevel, where the Muggle spy operations were based).

The head of security operations walked into the NAC operations office and nodded to the receptionist as he approached her desk (that this was only a satellite office, and that he was stationed at Central NAC Operations beneath the Canadian Embassy, had far more to do with the central location of MacDonald House than anything else.)

"They've just completed the initial contact, Sir," the receptionist noted.

"Still in the interrogation room, then?"

"Yes, Sir."

The Iroquois wizard thanked the American witch, then weaved his way through the open-office desk arrangements to a door on the far side of the wall. That door opened into a much smaller room, where two of his agents with joint US/NAC citizenship were sorting out the personal effects of the wizard who had been caught trying to infiltrate the United States Embassy.

"What do we got, Donna?" he asked.

Donna White, who was the highest-ranking American native under Bucktooth's command, looked up from the piece of parchment that she was examining and said, "One smelly Death Eater. Beyond that, don't really know yet, Sir."

Bucktooth glanced towards the charmed one-way mirror and took a quick look at their prisoner. He focused more on the prisoner's manacles than on his face.

"Donna?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Why did you string up your prisoner by his wrists?"

"Because he didn't want us to shackle him to the chair."

"And why was that?"

The junior officer standing next to Lead Agent White laughed.

"Maybe because he doesn't have an ass to sit down on, Sir?"

Bucktooth frowned, and walked over to the one-way mirror for a closer look. The prisoner was standing on the far side of the interrogation table, with his manacled hands stretched high above his head. The greasy-haired wizard was facing the mirror, which made it difficult to tell whether he was or was not in possession of an arse. But the prisoner had been stripped down to his non-magical shorts, which made it relatively easy for Bucktooth to spot the ugly black tattoo on the wizard's forearm.

"Severus _Fucking_ Snape," the security commander hissed.

"You know him, Sir?" Donna asked. "He refused to give his name."

"Yeah…he's an allegedly reformed Death Eater."

His American subordinate winced.

"Should _I_ have known him, then?" she asked.

Bucktooth glanced towards Donna and shook his head.

"He's much more of a Team Felix issue."

"Understood, Sir," the American stated, with both a slight edge and a tinge of relief in her voice.

Donna White was in charge of ward maintenance, ward monitoring, and the other day-to-day magical security operations within the U.S. Embassy compound. "Team Felix" was the informal name of the directorate that employed all of the NAC's spies and intelligence gatherers (i.e. the magical counterparts of the CIA and Canadian SIS). They were charged with keeping tabs on foreign magical governments, and any internal threats that these governments faced or external threats that they posed. Team Felix was rather territorial and stingy when it came to sharing information that folks in the other NAC departments considered relevant for their own assigned tasks.

Bucktooth asked, "Any explanation for why Snape is missing his arse?"

"Splinched, Sir…just took a call from the British Ministry, requesting access so their magical reversal people can reverse it."

"At least they were smart enough to call ahead," the second agent noted.

Bucktooth turned towards the American junior officer and snorted. "_This_ time, at least. Did they have any insights over why the prisoner tried to apparate onto U.S. sovereign territory?"

"No, Sir…you know how compartmentalized they are over there…the de-splinchers just knew that somebody had messed up, not who in particular."

"What did you tell them?"

"That if they gave us the splinched bits that we would be more than happy to reunite them with their owner."

"Good," said Bucktooth. "So, did Mr. Snape provide any reasons for wanting to pay us a visit?"

"No, Sir," White replied. "All he would say was that he was working on behalf of Albus Dumbledore, and that we should contact him."

"And that's all you could get?"

"Yes, Sir," the junior agent noted. "I tried, but his occlumency barriers were too strong. Gave me a nasty headache."

"You would have known that in advance had you had access to his file, or if you had waited to talk with someone who did…someone like me."

"Yes, Sir."

The lead American agent handed her boss a slip of parchment. "The prisoner did have the embassy's address written down, along with two separate addresses on separate slips."

"Any places of interest?"

"One was the road that circles Regent's Park," White noted. "The other was a connecting road in East London that doesn't appear to have any associated street addresses."

"Right, then," Bucktooth decided. "I'll just have a quick chat with our friend, and then you can transfer him to your holding cell."

The lead American agent shook her head. "We'll have to move him somewhere else…our holding cell is occupied at the moment."

"Really?" Bucktooth asked. "I wasn't aware that you had another prisoner."

"He came in with Snape, Sir."

"I thought you just had one bounce…he didn't side-along, did he?"

"Actually, that sort of describes the situation, Sir…we think that the prisoner had a transfigured tiger in his pouch."

"A what?"

"A tiger, Sir…that's what we've got in our holding cell."

"A real tiger?"

"That's what it looks like, Sir, only it's been transfigured into a plastic toy tiger," White explained. "Threw it in the cell because we didn't want to take any chances on the transfiguration running out of gas."

"So let me get this straight…Snape was carrying a toy tiger in his pocket that was actually a real tiger, only transfigured?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And you've got this toy tiger that's a real tiger in your holding cell."

"Yes, Sir."

Bucktooth shook his head in disbelief.

"Okay, this I've got to see for myself," he said. "Donna, let your counterpart know that you've got the situation in hand, and that he doesn't need to get his Muggle security forces any more riled up than normal. Then get on the phone with Felix…tell them that I need Hector over here pronto."

"Yes, Sir," the lead agent replied.

Bucktooth then turned towards the junior officer (whose name escaped him at that moment) and said, "You're with me."

The junior officer nodded, and nervously fell in step behind the wizard who was five steps up his chain of command.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Ministère des Affaires gobelin  
__Ministère Français De La Magie, Paris__  
_

Malice hadn't returned from London by the end of the agreed-upon break period, so Harry, Bill and Chokebar moved on to other items on the agenda. The new Lord Potter slipped the Black and Peverell rings onto his fingers and accepted the two Head of House positions with few comments and little fanfare. Harry asked why there was a new Black ledger to review when he had already received Sirius's bequest. He was told that there were entailed Black properties and holdings that Sirius couldn't have given away to anyone other than the next Head of House.

The Peverell ledger was relatively slim; the vaults had been in caretaker status for more than two hundred years (not that much could have been done to increase their holdings through aggressive management). Harry then thought to ask whether there were any more marriage proposals or contracts tied to these two houses. Chokebar had anticipated this question, and was going to show his goblin sense of humor with a joke. The joke was about Harry's father and Sirius drawing up a contract that would require a person who was both Lord Potter and Lord Black to "go fuck themselves." But given circumstances and his client's understandably dour attitude, Chokebar thought better of the idea, and instead advised his client that there were no additional contracts or proposals to deal with.

The senior account manager then pressed on to a different item on the meeting agenda, and offered Harry a rental agreement for "Cortex Gaztelua," the mountain estate that Bill had warded over the previous week. It was a month-to-month lease, with rent set at one galleon per month and another galleon required for the security deposit. Chokebar explained that they had to charge some sort of rent in order to key Harry into control of the wards that Bill had designed. After Bill confirmed this fact, Harry signed the rental agreement and was given the front door keys (which took the form of a portkey-charmed wine bottle cork). Bill offered to explain the symbology of the portkey material, but Harry suggested that there were other more pressing issues to focus on.

It was at this point that Malice returned to the table with a very thin ledger in hand. Chokebar took the leather-bound book, and asked for a few minutes to scan its contents. The account manager spent extra time reading one particular page. He showed the page to Malice, pointed towards one specific line, and whispered something into her ear. Bill was only able to pick up the Gobbledygook words "friends" and "flobberworms." It was a whole lot easier to understand Malice's caustic whispered retort…she wasn't to be blamed for not bring a linked ledger that Chokebar hadn't asked for. The account manager growled a bit before returning his attention to his client and client's liege man.

"As I have already mentioned," he began, "I am not at liberty to discuss the contents of this ledger unless you claim title as Head of House Slytherin. With that said…and speaking only in general terms…."

Chokebar looked at Harry and asked, "Are you aware of the differences between claims based on birthright and claims arising from conquest?"

Harry let out a deep breath as he turned towards Bill. "No, I'm not…but I have a feeling that I'm going to be looking into that difference in the very near future."

"Very good," said Chokebar. "And so long as you doing this research, it might benefit you to do a broader review of the charitable organizations that are recognized by the British Ministry of Magic. There is one specific group that Lord Slytherin has historically been associated with…at least over the past twenty or twenty-five years. It might be worth continuing that patronage should you decide to take on that title."

"Okay," said Harry. "Any hints on what group that is?"

Chokebar shook his head. "I'm sorry, Lord Potter, but again…there are confidences that must be maintained." The account manager then switched over from English to Gobbledygook as he turned towards his secretary and hissed, "And don't you dare say a word to our client about friends and flobberworms!"

The snort that escaped from the French arbitrator's nostrils suggested that he understood the goblin tongue just as well as Bill did.

**oo00OO00oo**

_U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London_

The differences between the transfigured tiger and his transfigured Biro were minor, and not at all noticeable until you held them up to your eye. And since Billy Bucktooth had no plans on letting the prisoner get that close to either transfiguration (at least not in toy form), that was good enough for him.

The security commander held the near-identical toys in each hand, and admired his handiwork.

"It _is _my Biro that I'm holding in my left hand, right?" he called out.

The junior officer who was on the outside of the locked holding cell looked through the reinforced steel bars and said, "Yes, Sir. You've got the real tiger in your right."

"Guess there's no great harm if we've mixed them up," Bucktooth said casually.

"Sir?" the junior agent asked nervously.

Bucktooth smiled as he tossed the transfigured toy held in his right hand onto the cell floor.

"On the door," he said clearly, more from routine than for need.

The junior officer stuck his wand tip into the lock and cast the spell that opened the cell door. He used a different spell to relock the cell door once his commander was outside.

"Let's see what we've got," said Bucktooth, as he drew his wand and hurled an overpowered _Finite_ through the cell bars. The targeted finger-sized plastic toy quickly morphed into a very hacked-off four-hundred pound predator…a predator that made his opinion on his recent treatment known with a tremendous roar.

"Yup, that one was the real tiger," Bucktooth casually noted, as he pocketed the other transfigured toy. He glanced over his shoulder towards the junior officer who had reflexively backed away from the bars and asked, "You okay?"

"Yes, Sir," the younger wizard replied.

Bucktooth didn't know (or couldn't remember) much about the junior officer's background or skill set, and decided that this would be an excellent opportunity to learn.

"Right, then," he said. "Why don't you take the lead on figuring out why our trespasser had _this_ tiger in his potions pouch?"

Deciding that "because he needed fresh potions ingredients" wasn't a good enough response (at least not before casting a few spells), the junior officer pointed his wand towards the pacing tiger and gathered the same basic information that Snape had gathered at the zoo…while the tiger wasn't magical, there _was_ something magical inside the tiger.

"Well, fish it out, then!" Bucktooth replied, after the junior officer verbalized his assessment.

The younger wizard's gaze shifted from his superior officer to the Sumatran tiger.

"I'm not much of a hunter, Sir," he noted. "Don't really know any field dressing spells."

Bucktooth sighed. While he certainly knew a few spells that gutted big game animals without too much muss or fuss, he certainly wasn't going to put down a critically endangered species if there were less invasive alternatives.

"You don't need to gut something…or someone," he noted, "just because you suspect that your suspect might have something _in_ their gut." Bucktooth then pointed his wand towards the tiger and cast a vomiting hex. He then quickly followed with a shield charm when the tiger turned towards the spell source.

The junior officer wasn't quick enough to avoid being splattered.

"Hold on!" Bucktooth admonished, as the younger wizard started to cast a laundering charm. "You've got to check if the magic source is in the vomit before you banish it."

The puked-on junior officer frowned as he looked down the front of his soiled robes.

"But a detection spell won't work…there will be too much background interference from my robe's temperature control charms."

"Then I suggest you scrape the vomit off by hand before you cast the spell," Bucktooth said with a grin.

"Yes, Sir."

Bucktooth turned towards the exit. "I'm heading back to the interrogation room," he said. "Let me know when you find something."

"Yes, Sir," said the dispirited agent. "What if the magic source wasn't in his stomach?"

Deciding to give the kid a bit of a break, Bucktooth cast another detection spell towards the tiger.

"Looks like it's still inside," he noted. "You can clean yourself up before the next step."

"Next step, Sir?"

Bucktooth laughed. "Checking further down the digestive tract," he explained. "You do know how to cast a bowel loosening hex, right, erm...?"

"It's Dillert, Sir. And yes, I know that hex."

"Carry on then, Dilbert," the senior officer stated, as he headed for the door.

"Yes, Sir," the junior agent replied glumly.

The young wizard knew when he accepted his posting that as the lowest-ranked agent on the totem pole he would be tasked with a lot of shit-work…he just never thought that would be the literal case.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour_

Bill and Harry's return portkey set them down ten feet in front of the main door to the Delacours' ancestral home. They got no further; two Delacour house elves immediately popped up and blocked the entrance. When asked why they couldn't go inside, the apologetic house elves explained that the chateau was being redecorated for an evening event. They then volunteered to guide Bill and Harry to the estate's private beach, where Hermione and Fleur were waiting for them. When Bill expressed his surprise over the fact that the two witches weren't inside helping with the birthday party redecorating, the house elves insisted that the two witches were indeed helping by providing incentives for them to steer clear of the chateau.

Bill rather liked that answer.

"What say you, milord?" he asked. "Shall we attend to our ladies and their incentives?"

Harry pursed his lips. "Sounds nice, except…I can't stop thinking about the results of that inheritance test."

"You mean that last house that you are eligible to claim as its Head?"

"Yeah, and whatever Chokebar was talking about towards the end…did you understand what he was saying when he switched over to Gobbledygook?"

"Something about friends and flobberworms," Bill replied. "Didn't make much sense."

"Seemed important enough to him," Harry replied. "Makes it important enough to me to want to look into it straight away."

Bill nodded in understanding. "Unfortunately, it's likely that any relevant information is going to be back in Britain. We could ask Fleur's father for ideas, once he's returned home from work."

Harry looked at his watch. "Which with my luck won't be for a couple more hours."

"If that's the case, then Hermione and Fleur might have some ideas on what to do while we're waiting," Bill suggested with a smile. "I'm sure that they'd have sympathetic ears."

"Their ears are probably more sunburned than sympathetic," Harry quipped. But then he held up his hands in mock surrender, and suggested that they should just go with the flow, at least for the balance of the afternoon. When Bill voiced his approval, the two house elves grabbed Bill and Harry by the hand and disappeared from the Delacour's doorstep (making a noise not unlike the _Pop!_ of a liberated champagne cork).

The freshly-minted Lord Potter/Black/Peverell fully expected to re-appear in front of two half-dressed witches. In fact, he half-expected Fleur and Hermione to be completely naked, sipping from wine glasses as they worked on their all-around tans. He even harbored the thought that one of those fully nude witches would greet him with hugs and kisses once they appeared on the beach. So he wasn't at all surprised when a mostly-naked witch jumped into his arms barely a second after his boots hit the sand.

It was the fact that this mostly-naked witch had platinum blond hair that was so unnerving.

"Oh thank you, milord!" Fleur squealed, alternating her kisses from one cheek to the other. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou….!"

The teen-aged wizard awkwardly (and lightly) patted the French witch on her back.

"Erm…you're welcome?"

Harry glanced over towards Hermione, who (like Fleur) was topless. Careful to maintain eye contact, he gave his amused girlfriend a facial expression that asked, "What am I supposed to do?"

She smiled, and shrugged.

Now knowing that his girlfriend wasn't instantly upset with him being ambushed, Harry risked letting his eyes drift downwards. Hermione's typically-wild hair was pulled back into a tight pony-tail, which only emphasized her bare shoulders…and bare collar bones…and bare breasts. There was, in fact, nothing that wasn't bare until Harry's gaze drifted below his girlfriend's hips and fell upon the skimpiest of thong bottoms…bits of white string attached to a patch of white fabric that looked barely bigger than a matchbook.

"I hope you like what you see, Harry," his girlfriend said coyly. "After all, you did pick it out of the catalog."

He did, and that was a big problem, because Fleur was still hugging him tightly, and peppering his cheeks with kisses. And while his dress robes hung loosely from his shoulders and had lots of fabric to them, Harry was still afraid that his reaction to seeing Hermione dressed that way would be seen, or felt, or misinterpreted.

Bill came to Harry's rescue by stammering out, "Fleur…a little decorum, s'il vous plait?"

The French witch reacted in a flash, breaking off her kisses and the physical contact. She took two steps back, dropped her knees, and leaned forward in a supplicating bow. The fact that this allowed her breasts to swing freely did little to alleviate the need for blood-flow control.

Fleur purred, "Thank you, milord, for granting your liegeman a boon."

Harry arched an eyebrow. "You could tell?"

"Oh, yes, milord," Fleur replied. "May I now offer you my fealty as well?"

The messy-haired wizard reached up and gave the collar of his dress robes a nervous tug.

"Maybe later," Harry said. He gestured towards Bill, and said, "Why don't you celebrate the boon granting with your fiancé?"

Fleur looked up into Harry's eyes and smiled.

"As you wish, milord," she said, as she pounced on her fully-clothed boyfriend, and pulled into the crashing surf for another round of elemental water sex.

As Harry's gaze drifted towards the cavorting couple, Hermione reached out and pulled him into her own crushing hug. The snogging that ensued was a far more enjoyable experience for Harry…no need to worry about erection control…at least until a third witch ran up from behind Harry and hugged the back of his legs.

"_Welcome back, milord,"_ that younger witch said (in French).

Harry looked over his shoulder, then quickly pressed his face back against his girlfriend's neck.

"Hermione?" he hissed. "Why isn't Gabrielle wearing a swim costume?"

His girlfriend chuckled. She glanced over Harry's shoulder to ensure that Gabby hadn't made changes to her attire, then asked, "What do you mean? She's got a thong on, just like Fleur and me."

"But she's…she's….why is she wearing a thong, then?"

"Because Fleur and I told her that she couldn't be naked on the beach if we weren't?" she replied.

"But she's only eight…."

"Well, yes she is, but it is a private beach, and their attitudes are…."

"_Is something wrong, my Alpha?"_ Gabrielle asked. _"Would you like some help removing our Master's robes?"_

Hermione choked on some spittle.

"_No thank you, Gabby,"_ she replied. _"Harry and I need some private time right now."_

"_After we take off his clothes, right?"_

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"_No, Gabby, after you go back to searching for sea shells on your own."_

"_Oh, poo!"_ Gabrielle whined, as she let go of Harry's legs and reluctantly picked up her bucket of shells.

Harry couldn't help but laugh.

"That sounded like something that Luna might say, if only she spoke French," he said.

"Right in one," Hermione replied, as she watched Gabrielle head back down the beach. Spotting Fleur and Bill's surf-enhanced shagging out of the corner of her eye, she spun Harry around so that he was facing a blue and white-striped tent that was pitched above the high tide mark.

"Why don't you make your way to the cabana while I fetch your suit from my beach bag?" she asked.

Getting out of the (two-way) viewing range of the Delacour sisters sounded like a great idea to Harry, and the Summer sun was beginning to test the cooling charms on his dress robes, so he followed orders and headed towards the tent.

**oo00OO00oo**

_U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London_

A junior security officer wearing freshly-laundered robes dashed into the interrogation room area with an evidence pouch in hand. He nodded at the administrative assistant who had been tasked with temporarily minding Snape's personal effects, and offered to take over for her since he needed to wait there anyway. She thanked him for the offer, and returned to her desk.

The young wizard glanced through the one-way mirror, then quickly looked away. He knew better than to barge into the interrogation room while the highest-ranked London-based NAC security officer and highest-ranked London-based spy were "working" the prisoner for information. He knew better than to even acknowledge knowing that Hector Gutierrez ran Team Felix operations in Britain and Ireland…that kind of intel was definitely above his pay grade. So he patiently took up the admin person's station, and resisted the temptation to turn on the mirror's audio capture feature.

The door to the interrogation room proper opened ten minutes later. Billy Bucktooth and Hector Gutierrez walked out of the room with wide smiles on their faces and a sparkle in their eyes that made the junior officer wonder if the two men had enjoyed what they had just done.

"Nice to get out of that stink…oh, there you are, Dilbert!" Bucktooth said, when he spotted the junior officer.

"It's Dillert, Sir," the younger wizard gently corrected.

"Of course it is," Bucktooth replied. He gestured towards his companion and said, "Dillert? This is Hector. Hector? This is Dillert."

The Mexican/NAC joint national extended his hand and said, "Good to meet you, Dilbert."

The junior officer tried not to dwell on the fresh blood stains on the spy's robe sleeve as he shook the man's hand.

"So what do you have for us?" Bucktooth asked.

"I, erm…found the magic source in that tiger, Sir," the younger wizard replied.

Bucktooth squinted when the junior officer held out the transparent evidence pouch.

"And you placed that source in this bag?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, sir," Dillert replied. He held the transparent pouch up to his face, then pointed towards one corner.

"Right here, Sir. A single strand of hair hosting an active tracking charm."

Hector took the evidence pouch from the junior officer and held it up to the ceiling light.

"Did you run a diagnostic on the hair itself?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir," Dillert replied. "It's human, and given its coarseness and consistency, likely from the pubic region."

"You don't say," the NAC spook replied. He turned to Bucktooth and said, "Reminds me of the time that we caught that sick bastard who raped one of our case officers, and fed his bits to…"

Bucktooth cleared his throat nodded towards the junior officer.

"Oh, right," Hector said. He turned towards Dillert and said, "You didn't hear any of that, right Dilbert?"

"Hear what, Sir?"

"Good man."

"Did you find any more of the hair's owner in the tiger's scat?" Bucktooth asked.

The junior officer shook his head. "No other human remains," he stated. "Did have some partially-digested sirloin in the vomit."

"Ah, so that was what I spotted on your robe collar?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Okay, then here's what I want you to do," said Bucktooth. "Report your findings to Agent White, and tell her that I want her to start in on a complete Level 4 scan of the embassy compound."

"Yes, Sir…what should we be looking for?"

Bucktooth pointed towards one of the three pieces of parchment on the evidence table.

"The prisoner had the street address of the London Zoo written down on a piece of parchment. The London Zoo has tigers. The prisoner had a tiger that had a charmed pubic hair in its gut. He also had a similar piece of parchment with the embassy's address written down on it, and he tried to apparate here. So it's logical to assume that…"

"That we're looking for another tiger?" the junior officer asked.

"No, you dolt…you're looking for another tracking charmed pubic hair!" Bucktooth shouted.

"Yes, Sir," the younger wizard meekly replied.

"So how is our tiger doing?" Bucktooth asked (using a much calmer tone of voice).

"A little dehydrated, but still pretty angry, Sir."

"Time to get rid of him, then," the older wizard declared. "Get on the floo with the Ministry. Tell them that their Muggle zoo is probably missing a tiger, and that we'll trade that tiger for the prisoner's splinched ass."

"Hardly seems like a fair trade," Hector joked. "What else should we ask for?"

"That's your department's call…not mine," Bucktooth replied.

The junior officer waited a moment for his orders to be clarified. When they weren't he decided that he had just been dismissed and headed for the door. But he paused when he spotted something odd in the one-way mirror. He turned, and risked taking a closer look.

"Sir?" he asked. "Does the prisoner know that the tiger toy in there is really a transfigured Biro?"

Bucktooth glanced back towards the junior officer and smiled.

"What do you think, Dilbert?"

The younger wizard took another look through the mirror. The roughed-up prisoner had a look of terror in his eyes as he hung from his wrists. And those eyes were focused on the toy tiger which had been left on the table's edge, directly in front of him.

"Off you go, Dilbert," said Hector the spy.

The junior officer nodded and dashed out the door with a smirk on his face.

"So now what?" Bucktooth asked his colleague.

Hector shrugged. "Now you've got a hair to track down, and I've got to sort out the political angle," he stated. The head spy then walked towards the mirror and spat on the floor.

"It's not too late to cut the bastard down and feed _him_ to the tiger," he noted.

Bucktooth shook his head. "No, we've already tortured that poor animal enough."

"That's too bad," said Hector. "And here we've already tenderized the meat for him!"

Bucktooth rolled his eyes. "Be a pal and remember this time to heal the bruises before you hand him over?"

"Hell, we don't even need to notify the Ministry that we have him in custody for another forty-eight hours," Hector noted. "Plenty of time for those bruises to heal on their own."

"So you aren't planning on taking another go at him?"

The NAC spy shook his head. "Snape supposedly works for Dumbledore as a spy in Voldie-short's camp. If he can keep his secrets from either or those two bastards, then there's not much hope that me beating on him some more will do the trick."

"So why did you take a go at him in the first place?"

"Because the hijo de perra deserved it," Hector replied. "You've read the file, right?"

"Yup," Bucktooth replied. "Planning on going to Dumbledore, then?"

"Not unless I get some direction from Tenochtitlan," Hector replied. "I might reach out to a different interested party, though."

"Who?"

"Harry Potter."

"Dumbledore's puppet?"

"Not as of late, if what we've been hearing is accurate," Hector noted.

"And you know how to reach him?"

"We already did," Hector said with a smile. "Just a few hours ago, in fact."

"Safe, sound, and out of Dumbledore's grasp?" Bucktooth asked.

The NAC spy nodded in agreement. "Safe, sound, and our Confederation's newest citizen."

Bucktooth chewed on that bit of new information for a few moments before asking, "So you're thinking he'll be looking to prove his loyalty?"

Hector shook his head. "I'm just looking for some advice on what we should do with his abusive Potions professor," he stated. "I'm sure that young Mr. Potter will have some…creative…suggestions."

Having read the Potter and Snape files, Bucktooth couldn't help but agree with that prediction.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour_

Harry found far more than a simple changing area when he opened the beach cabana's tent flaps and walked inside. The enlarged interior had dark hardwood floors and a massive king-sized bed. There were other pieces of furniture dressed in nautical-themed trim, and a closed door on the far wall that he guessed might lead to a shower room or lavatory. The tent looked far more like a bedroom than a cabana…and a well-used bedroom at that. The bed, for example, wasn't made…the sheets were crumpled, the pillows were tossed about, and the duvet was half-dragged onto the floor. The room also smelled like Arthur Weasley's tool shed…after the shed had been treated like a time-turning broom closet. There was a scent of hot, sweaty sex in the air that sparked Harry's pervy imagination.

Just how long had Fleur and Hermione waited for Bill and Harry on the beach, and what had they been up to while they were waiting?

The-Boy-Who-Headed-Three-Houses thought about that as he walked over to a wooden valet chair and hung his dress robes from the attached hanger. There was a tie rack for his tie, and a separate hanger for his white dress shirt. He threw his undershirt into a nearby clothes bin, then sat bare-chested on the valet chair so that he could pull off his boots. Harry was beginning to wonder where his girlfriend had gone off to when the tent flap was pulled back and daylight spilled into the dimly-lit room. He turned towards the tent flap and smiled.

"Sorry for the delay," Hermione said, "but I thought it best if I reconfirmed departure and arrival times with one of the house elves."

Harry pulled off one of his boots as he asked, "Are we going somewhere, then?"

Hermione shook her head as she dropped her bag onto a nearby side table. A smile formed on her lips when she spotted the messed-up bed linens, but she kept the conversation on-track by coyly replying, "Going somewhere? Not right away. Some _when_, on the other hand…"

"What?"

The Muggleborn witch giggled as she pulled her wand from her beach bag and cast a _Tempus _spell. "Okay, it's four in the afternoon. We will be departing the beach at five."

"So, we've got an hour to ourselves, so long as Gabby behaves?" Harry asked.

"More or less….or more," Hermione coyly replied.

Noting that Harry was having a bit of trouble slipping off his boot, she squatted in front of him and grabbed the heel with both hands. She had a passing thought that her lack of attire, subservient squat, and intended actions might be more appropriate for a concubine than a girlfriend. This thought was reinforced when her fingers grazed over the oversized rings on Harry's right hand.

"Three?" Hermione asked in a near-shout, leaning forward to get a better look at Harry's new jewelry. "So House Potter, House Black _and_ House…"

"Peverell. Could've been worse, actually," he noted with a sigh.

"Sounds like you've got quite the story to tell," Hermione noted.

Harry nodded his head and let out a sigh. "A story, unfortunately, that'll probably take a full hour to tell and dissect."

"Then it's a good thing we've got more time than that," Hermione stated, as she shifted her grip back to his boot heel.

"Thought you said we're due back at the house in an hour's time?"

Hermione leaned back and pulled the boot free from Harry's foot. She then placed that sock-covered foot in her barely-covered lap and gave it a good squeeze.

"I said that we were due back at five," she noted. "I didn't say anything about that being an hour from now…at least not for us."

Harry's eyes widened as he reached up and grabbed the small hourglass that dangled from his silver necklace.

Hermione nodded in agreement as she pulled off Harry's socks, then leaned forward and reached for his belt.

"So," he asked, "We're going to be the ones that messed with the bed linens?"

His girlfriend waggled her eyebrows. "Unless you want to have opened your present somewhere else?"

Harry shook his head as rose from the valet chair and pulled Hermione back to her feet. He then grabbed the back of her head and pulled her into a fierce snog, which left his girlfriend's hands free to undo his belt and unfasten his trousers. Harry's boxer shorts hit the floor a few seconds after those trousers, giving Hermione full access to bare skin. She gave his growing erection a squeeze, then broke away from Harry's embrace.

"Just a second," Hermione said, as she retrieved her beach bag and pulled out the white man thong that she had picked from his mail-order catalog.

Turning towards Harry, she did some obvious ogling of his naked body, with most of her focus on his bits. Hermione shrugged, then tossed the man thong over her shoulder.

"Doubt it would fit right now," she explained, as she approached Harry and reestablished a firm grip on his erection.

Harry looked down and covered his girlfriend's hand with his own. He gave that hand a playful squeeze and cheekily asked, "So what exactly are you afraid might not fit?"

Hermione's laughter broke the sexy/sultry mood that she was trying to generate.

"Oh, this will fit, alright," she said. "Only question is how long."

"You mean you can't tell right now?" Harry joked.

"I meant how much time, boyfriend!" Hermione chided. "And don't you dare say anything less than nineteen minutes!"

Harry laughed. "So now you've got irrational confidence in my endurance?"

Hermione shook her head and pressed her lips to his. "No, silly," she said, once she pulled her lips back. "I have lots of rational confidence in your recovery rate."

Harry chuckled as he extended the silver chain long enough to fit over both of their heads. He then grabbed the hourglass and asked, "So how does two hours sound?"

Hermione smiled as she guided her boyfriend's other hand towards the front of her thong. She leaned into his fingers and purred, "Tack on the extra real-time hour and it'll do…for now."

"Happy birthday to me!" Harry said with a smile.

His girlfriend was going to say "Me too!" but then remembered something far more practical and shouted, "Jeepers, Mr. Peabody!" as they groped two hours backwards.

**oo00OO00oo**

The freshly-showered couple opened the bathroom door and walked hand-in-hand back into the tent's bedroom area a few seconds (and also a few hours) after they had disappeared from that very same space.

"And in the epic battle between virginity and time…virginity lost!" Harry quipped, raising their hands in victory. "Merlin, I love my time turner."

Hermione rolled her eyes as she pulled her hand back and called for one of the Delacour house elves. The house servant popped in, and took almost no time at all to clear the air, change the sheets and make the bed.

"Excellent," said Harry, as he plopped down onto the duvet. "Now we can mess them up all over again!"

"We will do no such thing," Hermione chided. "Just because the Delacours pay their house elves wages and treat them well doesn't give you the right to make extra work for them!"

"Okay, okay!" Harry said defensively. He swung his feet off the mattress, reached out, and tugged on Hermione's robe sash. "So it's back to the lav for some more shower sex?"

Hermione pushed Harry's hands away and whined, "I've unleashed an animal!"

"Is that a complaint?" Harry asked.

His girlfriend chewed on her lip for a moment, then shook her head.

"It's more like a request to let my insides rearrange themselves back to normal," she admitted.

Harry chuckled. "Fair enough…I know we have other things to do over the next hour."

"We do?" Hermione asked. "I thought we decided that we had covered what we could about the Lord Slytherin mess?"

"We did," said Harry, as he undid his sash knot and let his terrycloth robe slip to the ground.

Hermione eyed his bare bum suspiciously as he turned and walked towards the corner of the room.

"What exactly do you have in mind, then?" she asked.

Harry responded by reaching down and retrieving the man thong that Hermione had tossed over her shoulder before they had turned back time.

"I'm hoping that it doesn't take an hour to figure out how I'm supposed to wear this banana hammock," he replied.

"It shouldn't." Hermione said with a laugh. She walked over and began to help him with some manual adjustments that threatened to test his ability to fit inside the skimpy garment. He let her play for a few moments, then gently pulled her hands away from his crotch and placed a gentle kiss on her lips.

"Let's get yours on now, and head outside," he suggested. "I'd like to see first-hand how much difference there is between Weasley Beach and the real thing."

Hermione giggled as she pulled her thong bottom from her robe pocket. "That's easy…the real beach has two less weasles, one more Gabby-Cat, a lot less supervision, and a lot more skin."

"Sounds like a fair trade to me," Harry reasoned.

A few minutes later, Harry and Hermione were walking hand-in-hand along the surf line, as Gabby-Cat showed them all of the best places to find sea shells on her family's stretch of beach. It was a good opportunity for Harry to start to get accustomed to the local beach attire. And it was almost as much fun as opening presents.

**oo00OO00oo**

Harry wasscrubbing the beach sand off of Hermione's back and wondering what kind of attire would be appropriate for his not-quite-a-surprise party, when one of the Delacour house elves popped onto the cabana's shower room and settled the issue. Hermione squeaked in surprise and reflexively spun into Harry's chest.

He looked over Hermione's shoulder and asked, "Erm…can I help you?"

"There is someone up at the house who wishes to speak with Lord Potter," the house elf replied. "I've brought some appropriate clothing."

"Oh, well…thanks," said Harry. He then asked. "So the appropriate clothing is something different than what I was wearing earlier this afternoon?"

The house elf shook her head. "No, Lord Potter…Bernie thought that would be very appropriate and instructed me to make sure that those robes were cleaned and pressed."

Hermione glanced back over her shoulder, and (once she confirmed that the house elf was female) mustered up the courage to turn around and squat down to the servant's level.

"But you said that you brought appropriate clothing?" she asked.

"Yes, Mademoiselle Granger," the house elf replied. "I brought clothing that Bernie says is befitting of Lady Potter."

Hermione arched an eyebrow. "And why would it be appropriate for me to dress like Lady Potter when I'm not Lady Potter?" she asked.

The house elf smiled and said, "Bernie says Mademoiselle needs the practice."

The house elf popped away before Hermione could formulate a befitting response.

**oo00OO00oo**

The cooling charms on Hermione's regal-looking dress robes could do nothing to control the flush on her cheeks when they returned to the main house. Her mother and Apolline Delacour were waiting for them at the main entrance, with knowing looks in their eyes and wide smiles on their faces. Hermione would have tried to wipe that smile off her mum's face with a few choice words about privacy, age of consent, and being addressed as "Lady Potter," had Fleur's mum not immediately announced that their guest was waiting for them in the same parlor where Harry had gained Canadian and NAC passports earlier that morning. The appropriateness of that location bore out when she led them into the parlor and introduced them to the same NAC attaché who had provided those passports.

"Good evening, Mr. Potter…Miss Granger," the official said. "So sorry to have intruded on your birthday celebration again, but I assure you that it shouldn't take much of your time."

"Not a problem," said Harry, as he gestured towards a cluster of furniture.

A house elf popped up and took drink orders while the three sat down (Harry and Hermione next to each other on a couch, with the official on a chair opposite).

"So I've been asked by my colleagues in London to ask your opinion about a situation that came up earlier this afternoon," the attaché stated, as he removed a folder from his briefcase. "Someone that you know tried to apparate onto the grounds of the United States Embassy."

Hermione gasped. "Oh, what were they thinking?" she asked. "So was his first name Fred or George?"

"It was Severus, actually," the official replied.

Harry broke out into laughter…partly in relief that it wasn't the Twins who had gotten into trouble, and partly in disbelief over who had.

"Severus Snape?" he clarified.

"Yes, I'm told that he is a teacher of yours at Hogwarts?"

"Well he's a professor, at least," Harry quipped. "Can't say that the man actually teaches."

Hermione cleared her throat and gently prodded her boyfriend's side with her elbow.

"What…am I wrong?" Harry asked.

The official smiled. "Well, getting some background information about the man's character was one of the things that I was asked to do."

"Don't get me started," Harry cautioned.

Hermione shook her head. "If you don't mind me asking, Sir…was this some sort of group attack, or a solo attempt?"

"The latter, Miss Granger," the official replied. "The entire situation was rather bizarre…he was captured at the ward line, of course, and searched. Some of the items in his possession were highly…unusual."

"You might need to define _unusual_," Hermione noted, "Snape's a potions master, and some of his potion ingredients are rather…"

"I understand completely, Miss Granger," the official stated. He opened his Muggle notebook to a different section and asked, "Have you ever known him to use bits of endangered tiger as an ingredient?"

"Tiger?" Hermione asked. "What, like a Bengal tiger?"

"Sumatran, actually."

"Snape tried to apparate into a U.S. Embassy with bits of a Sumatran tiger in his pocket?"

"No, it was a whole Sumatran tiger, stolen from the London zoo and transfigured into a plastic toy replica."

"What the hell was he doing?" Harry wondered.

"Language!" Hermione chided.

"Yes, Milady," Harry quipped (earning him another elbow).

"Do you have any idea why Professor Snape was trying to gain access to the embassy?" Hermione asked.

The attaché chuckled and shook his head. "Well, to be honest, it might have been accidental. He had bits of parchment in his pocket with street address for the zoo and the embassy. We know that he was within the tiger exhibit when he attempted to apparate into the embassy…"

Hermione's eyes widened. "Are you saying that there is a way to magically determine the originating point of an apparition?"

The official smiled. "Not that I'm aware of. What I'm saying is that he splinched during the attempt and the parts he left behind…so to speak…were found by your Ministry people inside the tiger exhibit."

Hermione asked, "Inside the viewing area of the exhibit, or…?"

"In with the tigers, actually," the official replied.

Harry laughed out loud at the thought. "So…what did Snape leave behind for the tigers to chew on?"

"He left his behind, behind," the attaché quipped. "I understand that the tigers didn't mangle his buttocks too badly…apparently, the smell was too off-putting, even for them."

Harry laughed so much that his face was turned red.

"HA HA HA…that's so brilliant, so….and here you were, apologizing for intruding upon my birthday party," he told the attaché. "You, Sir, have given me…well, if not the best birthday present I've received today, then certainly the funniest!"

"That's heartening to hear, Mr. Potter," the official said with a smile.

While Hermione certainly thought the situation was humorous, it wasn't so mind-numbingly hilarious that it shut down that part of her mind which was analyzing all of the bits of information that the attaché had just provided. When combined with other information that the embassy probably wasn't aware of, a startling realization sprung forth.

"He was on the hunt, Harry," she concluded.

"Wha…?"

"It must have been why he was in the zoo, and tried to gain access to the embassy."

The laughter died in Harry's throat as his girlfriend's logic soaked in. He turned towards the attaché and asked, "This might sound like a really odd question, but…did anyone in that embassy happen to run across a strand of hair with a magical tracking charm attached to it?"

The embassy official's eyes widened. "Funny you should ask, Mr. Potter…they did locate such hair…it was inside of the transfigured tiger that Snape was carrying in his potions ingredient pouch."

Harry let out a deep breath. He turned towards his girlfriend and said, "You're right, Hermione…just like you always are."

His girlfriend shrugged, and patted his arm. He then asked her to fill the embassy official in on whose hair that was, and who had applied the tracking charms (and why), while he stepped out of the room for a few minutes.

He waited until he was back in the main entrance before calling for a Delacour house elf that helped track down Bill. Bill confirmed that he had written down "A foreign embassy" on the list of potential wild hair hiding spots, but had given that list and most of the hairs to Chokebar. He then reminded Harry that Chokebar had told them that Dobby the house-elf had helped in the distribution process. That led to a second conversation with a Delacour house elf, and with Apolline Delacour herself. She was quick to approve Harry's request. And that was why, twenty seconds after that approval, Hermione and the NAC official heard a very loud cry of anguish and regret.

They both turned towards the opened doorway, but couldn't see anything or anyone who could explain what had happened…until Harry rejoined them a few seconds later.

"My apologies for the disturbance," he said, as he sat back down next to Hermione. "I've got some answers, though."

"Who was that crying?" Hermione asked. "Almost sounded like Dobby."

"That's because it was Dobby," Harry explained. He then turned to the official and told him that a very excitable but very loyal house elf had placed one of his tracking-charmed pubic hairs within the Tiger Territory's supply of refrigerated raw beef. He was in the middle of theorizing that the transfigured tiger had swallowed that hair during his breakfast when the Stars and Stripes suddenly appeared over the attaché's head and dropped down on top of him.

"What the hell?" the embassy staffer asked, as he pulled the U.S. flag off of his head.

Dobby the house elf popped next to the attaché and said, "Dobby is very, very sorry for causing troubles for the embassery and the Great Mister Lord Harry Potter Blackie Peverell, Sir! Dobby be leaving now…"

"Dobby, Wait!" Harry shouted.

The house elf popped away from the embassy official and instantly popped in front of Harry.

"Yes, Great Mister Lord Harry Potter Blackie Peverelly, Sir?"

Harry gestured towards the flag and asked, "What is this?"

"Dobby be returning the Great Harry Potter, Sir's hair and the embassery's wavy flag."

"Are you saying that you hid the hair in the U.S. Embassy's flag?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, Mr. Harry Potter, Sir's Grangie," Dobby replied, nodding his head vigorously.

The attaché quickly followed-up. "And you are also saying that you just popped over to London, entered the embassy, and retrieved this flag?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Embassery man," Dobby insisted. "Wavy flag be flying from rooftoppy pole. Dobby not be needing to enter the embassery to fetch it just now."

The official winced at this response, and pressed his fingers against his temples.

"The security implications are….so was that the second time you were at…or above…the U.S. Embassy?"

"Yes, only second time, Mr. Embassery man."

"Did any one happen to notice you, or try to stop you?" he asked.

"Dobby not be thinking so, but Dobby can be popping back and asking if you want Dobby to."

"No, that's quite alright," the man said. "If it's possible, though…can you fold this flag up for me?"

Dobby snapped his fingers, and the flag flew off the wizard's lap and folded in mid-air into a neat triangle.

"That's better," the wizard said, as the folded flag drifted back onto his lap.

During this flag folding Harry finally spotted the single strand of hair that was now resting in front of him on the coffee table. It really felt off for him to pick it up and wave it around, so he pointed and asked, "This is the tracking charmed hair, then?"

"Yes, Mr. Harry Potter Blackie Peverelly, Sir," Dobby replied. "Would you be liking Dobby to be retrieving the other hairs from all of the Shittertons and Titty Hillies?"

Harry stared open-mouthed at the house elf, then slowly shook his head.

"No, you can leave them there for now," he said. He then looked down, reluctantly took hold of the hair in front of him, and carried it over to the parlor's fireplace. A quick incineration charm eliminated the possibility of that hair being traced back to Chateau Delacour's location.

The embassy official stood up as well, placed his folder into his briefcase, and tucked the folded flag under his arm.

Harry said, "You're more than welcome to stay for dinner, if you like."

"Thank you, but perhaps another time…I have a lot of work to do and phone calls to make back at the office," he noted.

"I imagine so," Hermione stated, as she too stood up.

As they headed for the door, the official asked, "And parting advice on what we should do with Snape, then?"

Harry shook his head. "He can hang, for all I care."

The embassy official chuckled at the choice of words.

**oo00OO00oo**

Back in London, an administrative assistant was called in to mind a still-splinched prisoner while a junior security officer joined the search for a missing flag.

She tried not to stare, but couldn't help herself from looking through the one-way mirror at the naked, stretched-out and manacled wizard. His shorts had slipped off because he no longer had an arse to hold them up. But he didn't seem to mind, or to even notice that he was now naked; all of his focus was on the toy tiger in front of him that was poised to pounce, just as soon as the transfiguration wore off.

Snape stared.

Snape scared.

**oo00OO00oo**

**AN2: **Billy Bucktooth's surname was borrowed from Drew and Brett Bucktooth, the lacrosse-playing brothers who helped the Iroquois Nationals place third in the 2014 World Lacrosse Championships in Denver.


	16. Chapter 16: Joyeux anniversaire (Part 3)

**A Boon for Bill  
**a HP fanfic by canoncansodoff

**A/N: **As exposited in this chapter, all of the major plot points revealed in the first chapter of this story have now been resolved. Harry got his lordships, got his girl, and got the hell away from Molly and her potions. Bill got his boon, got _his _girl, and got the hell away from his mum and her potions. Also, this story was marketed as an alternative to the "An Excess of Phlegm" canon HBP chapter, and we're past a comparable end point in this fic.

So why isn't this story marked complete?

Because runaway trains are hard to stop. Because I've always wanted to do a Drunk!McGonagall scene where she regresses into a thick brogue. Because there's a small chance these last few chapters will lead into an action/adventure stand-alone sequel. And because it wasn't over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. (spoiler alert!)

Scottish translations courtesy of scotranslate-you-know-com. I'm certain to have buggered up the brogue, though, so apologies in advance. English dialogue written in italics means the character is actually speaking French. French dialogue written in plain text means that I'm testing the limits of Google Translate.

Trigger/tiger alert: There is an innovative mock execution in this chapter, and the NAC spymaster is a nasty bastard who'd feel right at home working within the black sites of his Muggle counterparts.

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.

**oo00OO00oo**

**Chapter 16: **_**Joyeux anniversaire (Part 3)**_

_4:30pm GMT (5:30pm CET)  
Pant-y-felin Road  
Pontarddulais, Wales_

A chuckle escaped from Mad-Eye Moody's lips as he looked up towards transformers that were mounted on top of the Muggle power line pole.

"A bit more nasty than naughty, this one," he said to himself. "Can only image what would have happened if a duffer like Dung had been assigned this location."

The retired Auror then took a moment to do just that…to imagine Mundungus Fletcher being electrocuted as he tried to retrieve a tracking-charmed pubic hair from the uninsulated power line.

That thought brought a wide smile to the wizard's lips.

That thought was then interrupted by a message delivered by Fred Weasley's patronus.

"_Some of us are gathering at our place for tea, if you're interested," _a silvery-white baboon stated, using Fred's voice.

The baboon patronus jumped onto the power line pole and began to climb. Mad-eye kept his one "good" eye firmly fixed on the lingering message. This precaution proved useful when Fred's baboon decided to hurl some silvery-white feces towards the retired Auror.

Thinking that he needed a drink (and also needed to return the favor and hurl a few jinxes towards Fred Weasley), Mad-Eye cast an _Accio_. He then cast a second spell that incinerated the tracking-charmed short hair in mid-flight, before apparating to Diagon Alley.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Canadian High Commission  
MacDonald House, London_

The wizard who ran NAC spy operations in Britain was one of the very few people who didn't need to make an appointment with the wizard who ran NAC security operations in Britain. Bucktooth's assistant had left for the day and his office door was ajar; the security chief either didn't know or didn't care that somebody like Hector Gutierrez could hear the tail end of his telephone conversation with his American wardmistress.

The Mexican wizard waited until that conversation ended before he knocked on the door and poked his head through the opening.

"Missing something, Billy?" he teased.

"Yeah, any patience for asses like you," the security chief replied, as he waved Hector inside. "What'cha got for me?"

"Some good news," the spymaster replied, as pulled a bottle of mescal and two glasses from an expanded coat pocket. He poured relatively modest measures of alcohol into each glass, pushed one across Bucktooth's desk, and said, "We found your missing flag."

Billie looked at the drink glass, then looked up at Hector as the Mexican wizard plopped down onto an office chair.

"Okay, so what's the bad news?"

"Must it always be a good news/bad news situation?" Hector asked.

"No, you're right," said Billy. "You usually only bring me bad news."

Hector shrugged his shoulders, and said, "But it's always bad news that you need to hear."

"So?"

The Mexican wizard took a sip from his glass and said, "We found the missing flag in France."

"Shit!" Billy swore. "So our thief was magical."

"Our thief was also a house-elf," Hector added. "Might want to check your ward schemes."

Bucktooth looked down at the mescal in his glass, and made it magically disappear with a few quick swallows.

"Look on the bright side," Hector suggested. "We also know which house-elf infiltrated the embassy, and why."

"And?"

"And he's not a threat. And I'm going to give you access to the agent that obtained that information," Hector replied. He drained his glass, then added, "He should be here within the half-hour."

Bucktooth shook his head and sighed. "That gives me time to meet to my ward monitors, at least."

Hector refilled his colleague's glass and said, "We also found out why Snape tried to break inside the embassy."

"Related to the missing flag?"

Hector nodded his head. "So how is our death-eating friend doing?"

"Haven't checked lately, to be honest," Bucktooth replied. "We were able to swap his arse out for the tiger, but doing the mending and desplinching is pretty low on my priority list right now."

The NAC spymaster's eyes lit up. "You know, I have a few free minutes in my schedule…"

Bucktooth nodded. "He's all yours…and their holding cell is tiger-free now. Throw what's left of him in there, if you think of it?"

Hector smiled. "When have I _not_ cleaned up after play time?" he coyly asked.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Diagon Alley_

Practicing what he always preached, Mad-Eye Moody spent the first five minutes within the shadows of Diagon Alley, on the alert for possible threats. The only person who had taken note of that arrival and tracked his movements was the one person who he had wanted and expected to take notice…the wizard who was looking down from his observation post on the rooftop of the Weasley Twins' joke shop.

Moody would have awarded George Weasley full marks for his vigilance, were it not for the iced drink that the on-duty wizard appeared to be holding in his hand.

The retired Auror crossed the street and entered the joke shop. George's girlfriend/employee Chastity gave Moody a friendly wave from behind the counter, and told him that everyone else was taking their tea on the roof. After chastising her lack of vigilance, he thanked the young witch for the information, and walked into the back room, where the stairs that led up to the rooftop were located.

He found most of the participants in Dumbledore's wild hair chase gathered on the multipurpose rooftop patio/observation deck. Fred Weasley was standing behind a wet bar, pouring unhealthy measures of gin into an ice-filled pitcher. His girlfriend Verity was sitting on a bar stool, while his brother was on the other side of the roof, sipping a drink as he watched the street below. The other Order members were sitting quietly in between, on outdoor furniture…except for Minerva McGonagall, who was sitting not so quietly.

"Whaur hae ye been, Mad-Eye?" she called out boisterously. "Grab a bevvy an' gie yerself ower haur!"

Moody stared at the Transfiguration professor for a few seconds, then walked over to the wet bar.

"What are you smiling about?" he asked the bartender.

"McGonagall," Fred replied, "The more she drinks, the more her brogue comes out…I've never seen her boozing it up like this." He then thought back on one of their more brilliant pranks, and his smile grew even wider.

"At least not intentionally," he qualified.

Mad-Eye shook his head and said, "You can take the witch out of the Highlands, but you can never take the Highlands out of the witch." He then asked, "I thought the invitation was for teatime?"

Fred shrugged as he held up the gin bottle and grabbed the bottle of mixer in his other hand.

"It was," the red-haired wizard claimed. "We've got both kinds of 'T'…Tanqueray _and_ tonic!"

Moody chuckled at the joke, then instructed Fred not to spoil his spirits with any manner of fruit, ice, or bubbly dilution. He got three thick fingers of straight gin in return.

"Much obliged, son," Mad-Eye said, before draining his glass and pushing it back.

While the younger wizard refilled that glass, Moody did a quick head count. Among those who had been sent on the tracking charm hunt, Arthur Weasley, Dung Fletcher, and Severus Snape were missing.

"So, did I complete your invite list, or are you still waiting on the others?" he asked.

"What do you think?"

Moody didn't bother to give the obvious answer as he carried his second glass of straight "tea" over towards the main group and joined the conversation.

Everyone had completed their assigned tasks, and while they certainly had seen some hairs, nobody had spotted Harry Potter's hide. Or Hermione's, Bill's, or Fleur's hide, for that matter. Some of the destinations had been harder to locate than others simply because the rude-sounding street signs kept getting stolen by cheeky tourists. And then there were the specific locations of the tracking-charmed hairs… all seemingly chosen with an eye for generating a mess, or an inconvenience, or the risk of injury.

There was a fair bit of anger about the situation, but nobody was blaming Harry. They all reasoned that the job would have required apparition skills. Since Fleur wasn't thought to know much about British geography, Bill was considered the most likely suspect, which gave Fred and George one more reason to drink heavily (as they considered the prank to directly challenge their reputations as the jokesters within their family).

The question of how even Bill was able to find so many places with naughty names was answered when Verity ran downstairs to retrieve a copy of their joke map of Muggle Britain. While she was away, Mad-Eye yelled at the others for talking about Order business in front of Fred's girlfriend.

The push back was strong.

"Whit urr thae secrits ye talking aboot, ya pure mad dafty?" a very tipsy Highland witch demanded. "We didnae teel th' lassie anytin oae import… Lik' th' fact that th' heid bummer of th' Order is a bawherr nonce."

Remus leaned towards Tonks and quietly asked, "What's a bawherr nonce?"

The pink-haired Auror shrugged. "If that doesn't mean paedophile, it should."

"Minerva does have a point," Emmeline Vance noted. "We were all laughing too hard this morning to really challenge Dumbledore about what he did."

Shacklebolt wondered out loud if their Wild Hair Chase that afternoon had actually been consistent with the Order's main mission of supporting and protecting Harry. Lupin thought that it was too late to tell, since they had all collected their assigned targets. Moody disagreed, noting that they there were still several spots left that had been bouncing against the edges of Dumbledore's tracking map.

Tonks jokingly asked if there was a town in France called "Mont Tatas," which earned her some grief from McGonagall.

"Ach, ya heifer…ye speaking French lik a mingin' German," she chided. "Titties are changing tae nénés doon thare."

That their former Head of House had just said the word "titties" in their company caused Fred and George to snicker like the school boys they might still have been.

But the general mood of the others quickly returned to baseline somber after McGonagall's slurred and salty language lesson. Nobody was eager to continue their search out past the edges of Dumbledore's map, and there was even less excitement over being oath-compelled to follow the orders of someone who would place tracking charms on a minor's pubic hairs. They all agreed Voldemort had it out for Harry Potter, and agreed that the boy deserved their support, but they were beginning to doubt that they could provide that support following Dumbledore's orders, and figured that they now had zero credibility with a teenaged wizard who had apparently decided that the safest thing that he could do was to run away from their protection.

Mad-Eye shook his head, let out a deep breath, and rose from his patio chair.

"Enough of this lying around shit," he loudly declared.

"Weel, whit kin we dae, ye moron?" asked McGonagall.

"War's over, Mad-Eye," Shacklebolt agreed. "Dumbledore dropped the big one."

Moody turned towards the bald Auror and barked, "What? Over? Did you say _over_?"

"Aye, well and truly slecherered," Minerva agreed.

"Bollocks!" Mad-Eye bellowed. "Nothing's over until we decide it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!"

Tonks turned towards Lupin and asked, "Germans?"

Remus shrugged. "Forget it, he's rolling."

"And it ain't over now," Mad-Eye continued. "Cause when the going gets tough... the tough get going! Who's with me? Let's go! Come on!"

Mad-Eye turned on his bad leg and hobbled towards the stairs. He stopped short when his magical eye failed to spot anyone making an effort to follow. Then he turned to face the others and scowled as he slowly walked back.

"What the fuck happened to the Order that l used to know?" he spat. "Where's the spirit? Where's the guts? Huh?"

Moody's magical eye seemed to be directly staring at each Order member at the same time.

"This could be the greatest night of our lives," he declared. "But you're gonna let it be the worst."

The retired Auror walked over to Minerva's side and adopted a whiny, feminine tone of voice.

_"Oh, but we're afraid to go with you, Mad-Eye,"_ he mimicked. _"We might get in a wee spot of trouble." _Moody then switched over to a full-throated roar and shouted, "Well just kiss my arse from now on!"

"Not me! l won't take this! Dumbledore is dead to me! Meddling Molly….Dead to me! Snape?"

"Dead!" George interjected. "Mad-Eye is right. Psychotic…but absolutely right. We've got to make things right with Harry, and make a clean break from the pervy bastard."

"Absolutely," Fred agreed, as he walked up to his brother and wrapped his arm around his shoulder. "Now, we could fight with conventional weapons, but that could take years, and cost millions of lives."

George shook his head dismissively, and said, "No, no, no…in this case, I think we have to go all out."

Fred nodded as they jumped into Twinspeak.

"I think this situation absolutely requires…"

"A really futile…

"And stupid gesture..."

"Be done on somebody's part."

The twins turned towards each other and shook hands.

"And we're just the guys to do it!"

**oo00OO00oo**

_US Embassy, London_

Severus Snape's focus on the toy tiger was broken when Hector Gutierrez breezed into the interrogation room with a paper-wrapped package under his arm.

"Hey Snape, I've brought something for you," his captor said, as he pushed the toy tiger to one side and placed the package on the table.

The potions master held his tongue as the spymaster casually ripped open the white butcher paper and unwrapped two slightly-chewed buttocks.

"Ewww, smells like potions ingredients past their expiration dates," Hector whined, as he waved his hand in front of his nose. The Mexican wizard arranged the two rump roasts on the table so that Snape was looking down the length of his splinched butt crack. They were no longer mirror images; the left cheek had punctured teeth marks, while the right had a set of bloody claw scrapes down the side.

It was a bit surreal for Snape to look at the open wounds on his disembodied arse, and not feel any associated pain from those wounds.

It was really surreal, though, for Snape to watch Gutierrez as he picked up the toy tiger, and began to play.

The Mexican wizard roared and growled as he marched the miniature tiger along the table, as if toy was going to climb up onto the cheeks and do a little dance. But Hector stopped short, and spat on the slightly-chewed flesh.

"Seventeen," he growled. "Seventeen innocent North American Confederation witches and wizards murdered by Voldemort and putos like you the last time around. And at least twice as many North American Mundanes…how much of their blood did you spill, you stinking pile of shit?"

Snape stared back at the Mexican wizard without reply.

"What's the matter, you fucking bastard?" Hector barked. "Cat got your tongue?"

The NAC spymaster glanced down at the toy tiger and chuckled.

"Here, let me help," he offered.

A spell forced Snape's mouth open wide enough to stuff the toy tiger inside. Gutierrez then conjured a piece of Muggle duct tape, and covered the struggling prisoner's mouth.

Snape's eyes bulged when his captor pointed a wand towards his face. Those eyes closed tightly when Hector started to cast a _Finite _spell. The potions master mentally prepared for a messy death by expanding tiger.

He was rather surprised, therefore, when the plastic toy expanded not into a six-foot long tiger, but into a six-inch long cylinder that lodged against the back of his throat.

The NAC wizard looked on with disbelief.

"I don't even want to know why you don't have a gag reflex," he muttered.

The Mexican wizard looked up at a wall clock and said, "Oh, look…time flies when you are having fun."

"I must apologize, Senor," Hector continued, as he ripped the duct tape off of Snape's face. "There is not enough time to both heal the ass wounds _and _reattach your ass…what a shame!"

Snape's eyes narrowed, but he maintained his stoic silence as he worked to dislodge the Muggle felt marker from his throat.

"So I will give you the choice," said Hector. "Do you want me to fix the splinching, or fix the bite and claw marks?"

Snape glared.

Hector shrugged.

"Or, I can wrap it all back up and throw it in the bin," Hector stated. "You are a potions master, no? Can you tell me if they make a Butt-Regro potion?"

Snape considered his options. The bite and claw marks were going to be incredibly painful once the two cheeks were reattached. But at least he would be whole again.

He spat out the marking pen, made his choice, then hissed in pain once he was (relatively) together.

Hector was charitable enough to magically staunch the blood loss, and to levitate Snape's shorts back into place.

Charitable, that is, to anyone else who would have been exposed to the sight of a naked Snape wearing bloodied boxers as he was dragged from the interrogation room into his temporary prison cell.

Snape caged.

Snape enraged.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Weasley Wizarding Wheezes, Diagon Alley_

It wasn't immediately clear to the small group of disgruntled Order members how the WWW's latest marketing device was going to help them do something futile or stupid. At least not until Verity opened the promotional calendar's cover and showed them the month of August…and even then the connection was tenuous.

To be fair, it was rather difficult to look for deeper connections when your eyes were focused on the magically-animated image of a blue-skinned naked witch wiggling her arse.

Mad-Eye shook his head in disbelief. "A Wheezes nudie calendar…why am I not surprised?"

McGongall was just as incredulous as the younger witch flipped through the pages. A disparaging comment about the "hing oots" that had modeled for the calendar was half-way off the tip of her alcohol-lubricated tongue before she pulled it back. After all, most of these nude (or nearly nude) witches were former students…and two of the calendar pin-up girls were standing right in front of her. So McGonagall fell back onto a far safer tack and harangued Fred and George.

"Whit wid yer mither think aboot this filth?" she demanded.

George took offense. "It's not filth…it's art!" he insisted.

"Art mah bahookie !" Minerva scoffed. "Ah dinnae wantae be anywhere near ye naughty jimmies whin yer mither's howler arrives."

Tonks laughed. "Then it's a good thing that somebody had the foresight to pinch Molly's stash of howler paper, isn't it?"

Fred and George's comparisons to a Muggle calendar produced by an Italian tire company did little to sway McGonagall's opinion of its propriety. She turned towards Verity and Chastity and asked, "Did thae twa miscreants force ye tae pose naked?"

Verity shook her head. "Not at all, Professor. All of the models were paid…"

"Except for us," her sister noted.

"Not helping!" Verity hissed. In a more normal tone of voice, she added, "And none of the models were forced to do anything or wearing anything they were uncomfortable with."

"And it was our idea, actually," Chastity added. "The boys didn't have anything to do with this calendar."

"Except for agreeing to the concept and paying the models and the printer," said Verity.

"Ah dinnae hawp ye," Minerva muttered.

"What, you think that we would let our boyfriends be there for the picture taking, or sort through the pictures afterwards?" Chastity asked. "It was a witches-only production."

"For a wand-wanking wizard-only market," Hestia chimed in with a laugh.

Tonks shook her head as she walked up to Chastity and draped an arm over her shoulder. "Oh, I wouldn't say that…I'm no witch's witch but don't you think that Miss August's blue bum is rather fetching?"

"And it's not all that different than a mail-order catalog, either," Verity noted. "That picture showcases one of our Crayola Cremes."

"Crayola Cremes?" Tonks asked.

"They come eight to a box," Fred offered. "Each one changes your skin a different color."

Verity nodded in agreement as she flipped to the February page and pointed towards her own animated image. She was dressed in a pink sheer teddy, clutching a heart-shaped box of chocolates to her ample chest.

"And look at mine," she insisted. "The shield-charmed negligee and milk chocolate mood enhancers are straight out of our WonderWitch catalog!"

McGonagall let out a skeptical snort and said, "Aye Ma Aunt Fannie!"

Shacklebolt cleared his throat to draw attention away from the calendar.

"So what exactly is the futile and stupid gesture that's going to make amends with Potter or express our displeasure with the Headmaster? Send them copies of this calendar?"

Fred snorted. "It'd be a waste to send this to Dumbledore…unless he considered it a prank."

"Why would he think it a prank?" asked Hestia Jones.

George giggled. "Because somebody who enjoys Cockingtake might fancy a different set of models?"

"Not that there's anything wrong with a wizard who likes Cockingtake," Fred was quick to add.

"No, not at all!"

"Still seems rather tame," said Tonks. "And counterproductive if you sent that to Harry…he might enjoy it, but I doubt that Hermione would appreciate the gesture."

"Ah, but there's the rub," said Fred.

"So to speak," added George.

"We think that Harry deserves reciprocity," Fred explained. "And to do that, we'll need to send a slightly modified calendar."

"What kind of reciprocity are we talking about?" asked Remus.

George smiled. "We got to see Harry's short and curlies…seems only fair that he gets to see ours."

"What?" asked Hestia. "So you're proposing a calendar where we are the naked pin-up girls?"

Fred shrugged. "Or naked pin-up gents, depending."

"Noo jist haud on!" McGonagall protested. "Ye'r doolally if ye think that ah wull pose in the scud fur yin o' mah students!"

"Doesn't have to be full-on full-frontal starkers," Fred declared. "I'm sure that Verity and Chastity here will be just as professional and tasteful as they were with the stock calendar."

"But…but…nude photies?" Minerva gasped. "Whit if ithers see thaim? Sacked and fair affronted, a' o' us!"

"You could always claim that you were a polyjuice victim," Mad-Eye noted.

"Or that it was Tonks showing off her stuff," Hestia added.

"Or showing off Minerva's stuff, as it were," the metamorph said with a wink.

Fred and George insisted that the modified calendar could be charmed so that only Harry would be able gain access to the alternative photographs, and for a limited period of time. When Hestia expressed her reluctance for others in the group seeing her naked, Verity and Chastity volunteered to be the sole camera operators, photographic developers and calendar producers.

There was still a fair bit of opposition to the idea, even when the best futile and stupid alternative that anyone could come up with was sending Harry a hairy birthday card. Consensus was only attained after the twins revealed their trump cards…another round of stiff drinks, and a practical demonstration of their mother's _Praetego_ charm.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour, France_

Given time to wash up and dress down before the birthday dinner, Harry leaned back against the closed bedroom door, ran his fingers through his hair, and let out a deep breath. He glanced towards the bed, where his incredibly busy and eventful day had started (in terms of where he woke up, at least). He walked over to that bed and plopped backwards onto it, his mind racing to link his immediate present to places and people and events.

This was the bed he had shared with his girlfriend. He was lying on top of the duvet that Hermione had dived under to hum happy birthday, before dashing through to the hidden door into her bedroom. She was now in that bedroom with her mother, no doubt fending off questions about what they had been up to earlier that afternoon…after the first time that Harry had walked into a bedroom and stripped off the same dress robes that he was about remove for the second time.

Harry placed the sole of his left boot against the heel of his right boot and pushed. It was just as reluctant to slip off as it had been earlier, when his thong-wearing girlfriend had squatted to help pull that boot off his foot. That was right before she pulled off the rest of his clothing…and before they turned back time…and before they turned in their V-cards, and…

And before they put their dress robes back on for a meeting with the NAC attaché that revealed just how turbulent a wake they'd generated during their escape.

Recalling that meeting drew Harry's mind further back in the day, to the meeting with his Gringott's account manager. During that meeting he had accepted his lordship, accepted his liegeman's loyalty oath, and granted that liegeman a boon. These were all actions that successfully resolved the first-order problems that had been revealed soon after his arrival at the Burrow four weeks previous. So that chapter in his pre-Sixth Year Holiday story seemed to be resolved…he had his girl, Bill had his girl, and all four of them were outside of Molly's meddling grasp.

Harry knew that he had no right to expect a "happily ever after" ending to any personal story, so long as Voldemort was still out there (and to a lesser extent Dumbledore, Molly, and Snape). But it would have been nice to have at least enjoyed an intermediary "Happily August After."

Nice…but not any more realistic.

The same bank meeting that had resolved old issues had raised new ones. Dumbledore seemed hell-bent on retrieving that which his meddling lieutenant had lost. The intentions of allies (both old and potentially new) needed to be tested. And Gabby still thought that she was on Harry's hook. And…

And his girlfriend had shagged him silly on his sixteenth birthday.

Harry smiled.

Life was good.

But there were things that he really needed to address if there was any hope of keeping it that way.

The birthday boy slammed his left foot against the heel of his right boot and pushed it loose. The left boot followed, as did the dress robes, tie, and top shirt button. He found ink and blank parchment in the top drawer of the bedroom suite's desk, and sat down to revise his "to-do" list.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Weasley Wizarding Wheezes, Diagon Alley_

Mad-Eye scowled as the execution of their futile and stupid gesture started to drag.

"Get on with it, girl!" he barked.

"Aye, annuf of yer muckin' aboot, lassie!" McGonagall agreed.

Fred Weasley's girlfriend mumbled something unintelligible from beneath the big black blanket that hung from the back of the tripod-mounted magical camera**.**

"We can't hear what you're asking of us, lass!" Moody bellowed.

Verity ducked her head out and shouted, "I need Professor McGonagall to lower the banner," Verity called out. "I can't see her Titty Hills."

Tonks barked out a laugh and quipped, "Now Verity, the correct term is nénés."

"Urr ye certain that mah bits ur covered by th' Molly dots?" McGonagall stated.

"Yes, I'm certain," Verity said.

Fred leaned forward from his place in line and offered his opinion.

"Plenty of side boob, Professor, but your nipples are covered."

"Fred Weasley! Een tae th' front! Dinnae goup at me!"

"Sorry, just trying to help," he said with a sly smile, as he turned away from her.

"Ah steel cannae hawp we ur daein' this," McGonagall muttered.

The elderly witch was quick to drop the banner and reach for her robes once the group photograph was taken. It took another round of drinks and reassurances to keep her from reaching for her emergency portkey when it came time for individual shots.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts_

Dumbledore needed three separate silencing charms to counteract the protesting portraits of his predecessors.

"If only they could accept that it's a temporary measure," he muttered, "and that it's a small sacrifice in the name of the Greater Good."

"Cheep!"

Dumbledore turned towards Fawkes' perch, and chuckled at the recently-reborn chick.

"Thank you for agreeing with me, my friend."

"Cheep!" Fawkes protested. He certainly didn't agree with the old man, and was frustrated by his inability to more clearly vocalize his displeasure (thanks to his currently immature syrinx).

The Headmaster smiled and nodded his head knowingly (or not-so-knowingly, as it turned out). Then he turned back towards the greatly-expanded surveillance device and reviewed what had been accomplished so far. The tracking charm map now stretched from floor to ceiling, and covered two-thirds of the wall (and most of the protesting headmasters' frames). An equivalent percentage of the world was now shown, including all of Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe. Only the eastern edges of North and South America were depicted, and the fact that there were a handful of dots still pressing against this side of the map meant that he still had some work to do.

Dumbledore raised his one good hand, and cast one final expansion charm. The wooden frame and charmed canvas groaned in protest, but grudgingly yielded to the targeted magic and stretched left towards the far corner of the office. The headmaster nodded in satisfaction as more and more of the Western Hemisphere was revealed. The tracking charm dots were dutifully following the map's leading edge, and despite his underlying concern Dumbledore was having great fun attempting to guess where each moving dot might finally come to rest. Most of these dots were tracking across the northern hemisphere, keeping the Headmaster from doing an adequate job of checking the lower frame's path for potential obstacles. So he didn't realize that the map was on a collision course with the wall-mounted shelf where he kept his collection of silver instruments...until that frame corner pushed those mostly-mangled and non-functional instruments onto the floor with a crash.

"Bugger!"

"Cheep!"

Dumbledore didn't bother trying to divine whether Fawkes had just cursed, or was chiding his own cursing…his focus was completely on the silver doo-dads now piled on the floor. He immediately dropped to his knees and fished out the two instruments that he had painstakingly repaired earlier that Summer.

He first pulled out the device charmed to monitor Harry Potter's emotional and physical well-being. He set it upright on his office floor and checked it over for damage. It appeared to be working fine…the sparkle content of the silver was brilliant, and the centerpiece was wobbling clockwise, suggesting that Harry was in tip-top emotional and physical health…perhaps the best shape ever. Dumbledore set the devise on his desk, and fished out the second monitor. Once he found the smoke-ring emitting instrument, he set it down on the desk next to the first…and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

No smoke.

This was worrisome, since this was the device that tracked the relative strength of the wards on Privet Drive. And if there wasn't any smoke, then there weren't any active wards.

Thinking that the instrument must have been damaged during the fall, Dumbledore pinned up his robe sleeve and began the tedious task of trouble-shooting. He soon realized that having half-as-many useful hands meant that it was going to take more than twice as much time to fix the device.

The Headmaster looked back at the wall-sized tracking map, and counted dots. Fixing the silver instrument wouldn't be as much of a priority if he knew that the protections on Privet Drive were fully-charged and operation. And the Dursley's safety was a far lower priority now that Harry was shot of their tender loving care.

Making a decision, Dumbledore rose from his desk, grabbed a pinch of floo powder, and called out Arabella Figg's address.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes  
Diagon Alley_

McGonagall was last in line when Remus Lupin opened the bedroom door and left the hastily converted photographic studio. She didn't care for the sly smile on his face, or for the twinkle in his eye.

"Ready to take it off for the team?" he asked cheekily.

The hiss that escaped from Minerva's lips was ferociously feline.

The former DADA professor responded with a laugh as he headed back to the roof top to join the rest of what Fred and George were now calling "The Calendar Club."

"C'mon in, Professor," someone called from inside the room. "Need to be quick about it."

Minerva reluctantly entered the bedroom and cast two different locking charms on the door. Fred and George's girlfriends were both inside. Verity was swapping out a new photographic plate on the tripod-mounted camera, while her sister was sorting through a small mountain of clothing and half-opened boxes that was piled on the bed.

Chastity pulled her boyfriend's old Gryffindor robe from the pile and held it up. "So what do you think, Professor? Opened school robes and a full monty shot? You could transfigure that chair into your classroom lectern…it'd be brilliant!"

The older witch pursed her lips. "Foremaist aff, young lassie, this insae a situation fur perfaissional titles. Ca' me Minerva."

Her former student smiled. "Sure thing, Minerva!"

"Secondly, thare wull be hee haw her linking me tae th' schuil," McGonagall said sternly. "Dae nae drag Hogwarts intae this fankle."

"Erm…are you saying that nothing in your picture should be school related?"

"That is whit ah said. Urr ye deaf?"

"No Ma'am, I'm English," Chastity replied. "Not used to hearing you speak with that accent."

"It comes oot wi' th' whisky," the older witch admitted. Minerva let out a deep breath and apologized. "Sorry, lassie, ah shouldn't be sae cross wi' ye. It's nae yer fault."

"No worries, Profe…Minerva," Chastity said with a smile. She dropped the school robe and fished some red tartan out of the pile. "As long as you're talking like a Highland lass, how about working with this shield-charmed shawl?"

McGonagall's eyes widened. She leaned backwards and said, "Ach, tae suggest sic a thing! Git that oot o' mah sight!"

"What's wrong, Minerva?" Verity teased. "Don't want to drag Scotland into this fankle?"

"Tis th' tartan o' a lowland clan," McGonagall explained. "Mah faither wid caw in his kist if ah wore that."

A quick flick of her wand transfigured the offending pattern into the greens and blues of Clan McGonagall.

"Thare," the older witch declared. "Now ah wullnae break oot intae a rash if ah place that against mah skin."

"Well okay, then," Chastity said. She held out the shawl and asked, "Trade?"

McGonagall stared at the shawl for a second, then let out a deep breath and slipped out of her robe. Now naked save for the _Praetego_ spell's modesty patches, she took the offered shawl and draped it around her torso (that any of them had been able to remove clothing while a _Praetego_ spell was in effect had been achieved by originally applying the spell while the target was naked).

"Oh, no…we can't have that!" the younger witch declared, as she snatched the shawl away and wrapped it around Minerva's neck.

"Bit…..!"

"Yes, bared bits, Minerva," Verity declared. "Everyone one else showed off their black blots." She watched her sister adjust the drape so that the shawl so that it hung to the side of McGongagall's breast, then decided to accessorize. A black shield-charmed pointy hat was pulled from the pile, and a brooch was pinned to keep the shawl in place.

Chastity took McGongall's elbow and guided her towards a full length mirror.

"What do you think?"

The older witch shook her head. "Ah see th' auld witch that a'm."

"Bollocks!" Verity chided. "You look fabulous…I love the cheeky tattoo, and we can only hope to have tits that firm when we're your age."

Minerva ignored the comment about the tabby cat tattoo that was perched on her blacked-out mound and said, "Bit mah legs ur sae pale 'n' skinny-malinky."

"Hmm…I think that they look great," said Charity. "But if you really want…"

McGonagall's eyes were drawn to an unmodified calendar that was sitting on top of a nightstand. She picked it up and flipped through the pages while the two sisters were hunting in the clothes pile.

"Kin ye keep aside fur me th' lest page o' th' calendar?" she asked.

"Now Minerva," said Verity, "you insisted that my sister and I have complete editorial control."

"And you were also the one that made us swear an oath not to alter any of the pictures after they were taken," Chastity added. "Or to allow anyone else in the group to see or touch the calendar once it was created."

"True enough," Minerva admitted.

"Thinking we should save the best for last?" Verity teased.

McGongall snorted. "Na, a'm thinking that thare is a chance that Hermione wull confiscate th' calendar afore Harry gets tae th' end."

"Well that would be a shame," Chastity replied with a laugh. She held up a pair of black silk stockings and suspenders and added, "Wouldn't want him to miss you wearing these, right?"

"A dinnae ken aboot that…" McGongall replied.

"Oh, they would be brilliant!" Verity insisted. "Very sexy, and Harry would still be able to see your pussy...cat."

Minerva rolled her eyes as she declined Chasity's offer to help with the expanded kit. The older witch sat on the edge of the bed, scrunched a stocking, and started to slip it over her toes. Then she stopped, looked at her tabby cat tattoo, and threw the stocking over her shoulder.

"Tae hell wi' it!" she declared. "If ye want tae show off mah pussy, then let's dae this th' proper wey!"

"What?" Verity asked with surprise.

"Ye heard me," McGongall replied. She pulled a green camisole from the pile, threw it towards Chastity and said, "Pat this oan!" The older witch then turned towards Chastity's sister and pointed at her own crotch.

"As fur ye…git rid o' this modesty spell 'n' clear aff th' kip."

"Kip?"

"Th' _**bed**_, ye sassenach whelp!" Minerva chided, as she tossed her hat and unpinned her shawl. "That is whaur ah wull stretch oot in a' o' mah glory."

The shocked sisters were quick to comply with their former professor's demands.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Privet Drive  
Little Whinging, Surrey_

It took very little time for Dumbledore to determine that the protective wards surrounding the Dursley residence were down. And they weren't just drained of strength…they were completely gone.

The implications were dire. The blood warding was designed to protect Harry and his relatives until he reached adulthood, and today was the boy's sixteenth birthday, rather than his seventeenth.

The Hogwarts Headmaster was well aware of how much intent mattered when casting magic. He would have sworn that he had been thinking about the legal age of adulthood within Magical Britain when he established the ward scheme. Those wards, however, were built on a mother's protections, and Lily was a Muggleborn witch. As best as Dumbledore could recall, the age of majority in Muggle Great Britain was either 17 or 18 (even though the age of consent was 16), so that shouldn't have mattered. What might have mattered, though, was a magically-adjudicated age of adulthood, based more on physical and magical maturity than on any one-size-fits-all legislation.

Of course, precisely determining why the wards fell was far less important in the short term than determining the best course of action now that they had fallen. And the thing to do was to approach the Dursley residence and warn them of the present danger.

Dumbledore didn't get past the front door before it was slammed in his face.

Harry's aunt and uncle were thrilled to learn that there was no longer any reason for their nephew to live under their roof, and were completely unconcerned about potential threats now that the wards were gone. And they saw no rational reason for them to be attacked so long as that nephew stayed far away from them.

Dumbledore walked away from the property, taking the most logical rejoinder with him. Given Harry's ill treatment over the years, it was unreasonable to expect him to lift a finger in the defense of his "family" (much less lift his wand). Dumbledore knew this to be true, the Dursleys probably expected this to be true…but Voldemort didn't know this truth, and he wouldn't hesitate to attack Privet Drive in the hope that Harry would be drawn into another rescue attempt.

The Headmaster was ready to wash his hands of the matter, and leave the Dursleys to their fate. He had too little time remaining in his own life, and too many things yet to do…things like returning Harry to the fold. Yet…there was a small sense of residual obligation left within Dumbledore's heart. And perhaps showing that he had made some attempt to protect Harry's relatives would bolster the boy's opinion of him (assuming that the boy would feel the same kind of grudging protectiveness that he felt).

Of course, this didn't mean that Dumbledore had to go _too_ far out of his way to protect the Dursleys from themselves…especially when his limited resources were presently spread so thinly. With that consideration in mind, the Headmaster sent a message to Mundugus Fletcher, instructing him to once again take up guard duty on Privet Drive.

Every other Order member was sent a different message…a_ Patronus_ that instructed them to meet in his Hogwarts office in ten minutes' time.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes  
Diagon Alley_

Given who posed (and what they weren't wearing), it wouldn't have shocked anyone to have known that the first photograph to be developed was the last photographic image taken.

Verity shook her head as she used a drying charm to finish off the darkroom production of that enlarged image.

"I can't believe you actually posed with McGongall!" she teased, "You're such a slag!"

"Oh, piss off!" Chastity replied, as she slipped Remus Lupin's pin-up photograph into the tray of image-animating potion. "I was wearing more and showing less than I was in my pin-up shot."

"It's not what you were wearing, it's who you were rubbing…and where!" Verity declared. She magically switched the new photograph with the last image of a stock calendar. "What do you think George's reaction will be?"

Chastity looked over her shoulder at the new image above the month of July and snorted. "He's never going to see it, remember? But if he did…so George sees a candid of me in bed with another witch…"

"Yeah, you're right…he'd get off on it," Verity said with a laugh. "Same as Fred…Merlin, our boyfriends are lads!"

"At least they're equal-opportunity pin-up models," Chastity said, as she pulled Lupin's photograph from the animating potion and handed it to her sister.

Verity shook her head. "Not really…'cept for McGonagall's pin-up they were all hiding behind Molly dots."

Chastity giggled as her sister cast a drying charm.

"Too bad, that," she said. "Professor Lupin's dot was hanging two-thirds of the way down to his knees! Makes a witch wonder."

The darkroom's red light masked the deep red blush that broke out on Verity's cheeks as she inspected the second enlargement.

"Oh my fuukin' god!" she hissed.

Chastity turned to see what was wrong, and gasped.

"Wonder no more, sister," Verity whispered. "He's hung like a hippogriff!"

"But how….?"

"Maybe because he's a werewolf?"

"No, not that…how come we can see his bits?" Chastity asked. "Where's the black dot?"

Verity shrugged. "Something in the magic, maybe? We both know those modesty patches were in place during the photo shoot."

"So what do we do now?"

"Now we see how many other bits we can see," Verity decided.

It was hard not to rush through the other developments, but they kept their focus, knowing it was unlikely they'd get another chance if they messed up.

Once all of the photos were developed and dried, they turned on the lights and got explicit confirmation that the _Praetego_ spell's modesty patches hadn't carried over in the photographs. Chastity thought the situation deserved a repeat of her question.

"So what do we do now?"

An evil grin grew on her sister's face.

"We put these in the new calendar…that's what we do," Verity said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, remember our oaths not to magically alter these photographs? And we couldn't even show these pics to the others without breaking our promise."

"But their intent…"

"Their intent was to get on equal footing, and perhaps give Harry a laugh."

"I don't know," said Chastity.

"Look at it this way," her sister offered. "If Fred and George didn't have a problem with us getting naked for the company calendar…"

"Fair is fair?"

Verity giggled, nodded in agreement, and started to cast switching spells.

**oo00OO00oo**

The foul-tasting sobriety potion cleared the booze in McGonagall's system and the brogue in her diction. It wasn't strong enough to spirit away any lingering doubts or regrets, however, which was why she was so eager to start in on a follow-up bender.

"I'll never be able to look him straight in the eye again," she told Mad-Eye, bringing a fresh drink to her lips.

The retired Auror shrugged as they watched the gift-laden owl lift off from the arm of Fred's grinning girlfriend.

"I expect he'd have as much trouble looking you in the eye," he noted. "The boy will see your picture…but you saw his pubes."

"There were just the four! And they weren't attached at the time!" McGonagall protested.

"Scant comfort, I imagine," said Mad-Eye. "Look, at least it provided the chance to see if Dumbledore had placed any tracking charms on us."

"There's that," Minerva agreed.

"Did you check your pussy?" Mad-Eye asked.

"Alastor!"

"What?" he asked. "You can't place a tracking charm on bare flesh, but you can place one on the ink that is tattooed onto that flesh."

"I am well-aware of that fact," Minerva replied primly. "I'm less aware of how you might have known that I have a tabby cat tattoo."

Moody replied by catching the witch's gaze with his twirling magical eye.

"Oh, right. I try not to think of what you can see with that thing," Minerva replied. "Talk about the inequities of seen and un-seen."

Mad-Eye rolled his good eye. "Boo-fukin'-whoo," he quipped. "Hey, I've got to go take a piss…would you feel any better if I let you watch?"

McGonagall sent the retired Auror off to do his business with a slap on the arm that was not unsimilar to how her favorite Muggleborn student expressed her displeasure with Minerva's favorite Muggle-raised student. Noticing that her drink glass was once again empty, she walked over to the rooftop bar, where Verity and Chastity (and Tonks) were refusing to explain how they filled a twelve-month calendar when there were only eight members of the Calendar Club.

"Another round, Mr. Weasley," Minverva asked, placing her glass on the bar.

"Yes, Ms. McGonagall," Fred replied with a smile.

The elderly witch was too focused on watching the alcohol flow from bottle to glass to take note of the address.

"Mr. Weasley, I'm warning you right now," she said. "There will be hell to pay if you spiked mah drink with any manner of magic that would have lowered my inhibitions…"

"Alright, I confess…I wasn't exactly measuring the gin with a shot glass," Fred said with a laugh. "Aside from that…"

Hestia Jones pursed her lips and said, "Oh, lighten up, Minnie Baby!"

Tonks nodded in agreement.

"Damn straight," she said. "Why would you want to know, Minnie Baby?"

"Know what?" Remus asked.

"Know for certain whether the Weasley Twins gave us a little magical courage to pose for those photographs?" Tonks replied. "More flexibility if we don't know."

Chastity giggled at that comment. "We sell a flexibility potion, don't we Fred?"

"Erm…yes, we do," her boyfriend replied. "Not that I spiked…"

Chastity leaned across the bar so that she could fake-whisper to Tonks. "Only time I've seen Fred and George volunteer to be their own test subjects."

"Really?" Tonks asked. "Any particular reason why?"

"Yeah, 'cause the flexibility potion makes you limber enough to bend down and suck on your own…"

"Okay, Chastity, that falls into TMI territory," her boyfriend announced loudly.

"Oh, lighten up, Freddy Baby!" Minerva said with a laugh. She then lifted her (once again) empty glass and added, "Just for that, the next round is on you!"

The grin on Fred's face as he mixed up another pitcher of gin and tonics had far less to do with being called "Freddie Baby" by his former Head of House, and far more to do with the fact that his former Head of House was finally treating him like an adult colleague.

**oo00OO00oo**

Mad-Eye was sporting a rather healthy scowl when he returned from the flat-level loo.

"Well that was interesting," he declared. "I got a little visitor while I was doing my business."

When Minerva snorted, he qualified his statement. "That is to say, I got a little message from Dumbledore calling me to a meeting in his office."

"Just you?"

"No, all of us, I reckon'."

"So why were you the only one to be notified?" Hestia asked.

Mad-Eye's magical eye rolled wildly before settling on Chastity and Verity.

"Maybe because you've been up here with those two," he explained. "All about the security fail-safe."

"Weren't you the one bitching about talking Order business in front of them?" Tonks asked.

"Bah, barn doors and horses," Mad-Eye replied.

"Well if that's the reason why we didn't get our messages," Fred decided, "then all we need to do is hang out up here with our girls…can't be forced to obey an order that can't be delivered!"

"Planning on sleeping up here tonight?" Shacklebolt asked.

"Wouldn't need to, so long as I'm sharing my bed with the right girl," Fred said with a wink.

"Well I'm going to need to tinkle before too much longer," Hestia added. "Will I need to share the loo with the right girl?"

Moody nodded. "I actually think it'd be best if you all powdered your noses right now."

Fred frowned. "You actually _want_ us all to go hang out with mum and the…what did you call him again, Minny Baby?"

McGonagall snorted. "A bawherr nonce?"

"That's it."

"Actually," said Moody, "I'm far more interested in seeing if any of us are _compelled_ to hang out with the Pervy Bastard and your howler-hurling mum."

Remus seemed to be on the same page. He raised his glass, and loudly declared, "I submit that right now, the best way that any of us can support the Order's main mission of protecting Harry Potter is…to ignore Dumbledore's orders."

Mad-Eye agreed. "Or to at least delay following those orders long enough to see if they're backed by any magical compulsions."

It was easier for Verity and Chastity to leave the rooftop for a few moments than for everyone else to separate from their company. Multiple versions of the same phoenix Patronus message materialized at nearly the same time (given that the Order members were spread out a bit, and hadn't been standing the same distance from the stairwell). The fractional differences in arrival time created a very loud and very dissonant group message, instructing each of them to travel to the Headmaster's Office.

"So now what?" Hestia asked, once the messages dematerialized.

"Anyone feeling compelled to do something?" Mad-Eye asked.

McGonagall scoffed at the question. "Absolutely…I'm feeling compelled tae hae anither dram."

The return of the Scottish witch's brogue brought a smile to Fred's lips.

"Only a dram, Minnie baby?" he asked.

His former professor shrugged as she stepped behind the bar.

"Ah think ah wull pace myself this time."

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour_

It was the best birthday party that Harry Potter had ever had…or at least the best that he could remember. Of course, it was also the only birthday party that he could remember, but he was certain that it would have ranked, even had that not been the case. The event was far less over-the-top than any of his cousin's birthday celebrations, and that suited Harry just fine. He didn't at all mind the fact that the dinner was almost as much of a homecoming party for Fleur as a birthday party for himself. There was a cake, and presents, and a birthday song (that Hermione cheekily hummed, rather than sang).

The birthday boy would have been hard-pressed to identify his favorite birthday present (unless you included an unwrapped girlfriend on the list, and he certainly wasn't about to call that experience out in front of her parents). They were mostly new clothes; some Muggle, other Magical. When Fleur and Bill gave him a new set of summer-weight robes adorned with his family crests, Harry reminded them that they had already given him an early birthday present. He then asked if the robes were made of the same fabric as his swim costume, which drew a good laugh from those in the know.

Gabby's gift was very creative (and more than a little cunning); she had cut up parchment and made up thirty-one handwritten coupons. Each coupon was redeemable for a day's worth of French language lessons, with Gabby as tutor and Harry as student. Each coupon was only valid for a specific day, with thirty-one coupons covering the thirty-one days of August. Gabby insisted that Harry needed to redeem each coupon, and decided that meant that he either had to stay with her at Chateau Delacour over the next month, or take her along if he went someplace else. It was a cute (if self-serving) gift that earned the nine-year old witch a chaste kiss on the cheek from Harry, and a bit of a lecture from her mother.

Bill offered up a very popular gift for his liege lord that he insisted was a joint present from himself, Fleur's father and the French clockmaker that owed her father a big favor.

It was Molly's clock, re-purposed.

The working surveillance device at one point in time had housed twelve separate hands. Now there were only four, labeled "Molly," "Arthur," "Ron," and "Ginny." Any concerns that it might be hypocritical for Harry to be able to monitor the locations of these four Weasley family members were mostly negated by the new options available on the clock face.

The only location that Bill hadn't swapped out on the clock was "_At Cogfir Inn_" (for sentimental reasons, rather than any burning desire to know when his parents or siblings were shagging). _Home_ had been replaced by _AzkaBurrow_. Bill told Harry that this was now the default location for his meddling mother, unless one of the other spots was temporarily more appropriate (like "_Acting like a Little Miss Nosy Bitch,_" which was printed using a very small font where _Work_ used to sit.)

The clock hand labelled "Ron" kept moving between_ Sloth_ and _Gluttony, _which sat side-by-side where _Traveling_ and _Hospital _were formerly located.

Ginny's clock hand had its own back-and-forth path, alternating between _Denial_ and _A State of Delusion_.

Arthur's clock hand, unfortunately, seemed to be permanently parked over _U__nter dem Pantoffel stehen_. It was Fleur's father who had come up with that idea. The direct translation from the original German was "(being) under the slipper," although it was just a long way of saying that someone was henpecked.

Everyone agreed that it was an appropriate clock hand location for Mr. Weasley.

They also agreed that the husband of a fireball-throwing part-Veela had been incredibly brave to have even suggested it.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts_

The painfully-long hour that Dumbledore waited for the Order members to arrive was only made slightly-less painful by the abundance of food. Molly had spread platters across the Headmaster's desk just as easily as she had spread her opinions on how Hogwarts should be run now that the Headmaster had regained his position. Arthur managed to steer clear of this Molly-dominated dialogue by spending most of that time hand-feeding grapes to Dumbledore's phoenix chick.

The excuses that were offered once Mad-Eye Moody and the others finally dragged themselves out of the floo were all nearly the same. They came as soon as they received Dumbledore's message, and those messages must have been delivered late because they were within the presence of Muggles, or amongst witches and wizards who weren't part of the Order. The alibis seemed a bit too convenient, but Dumbledore had enough faith in the compulsive power of their Oaths to discount the possibility of deception.

The late arrivals filled their plates while they waited a few more minutes to see if Snape would arrive (he had actually been alone in his holding cell when his message was delivered, but the Oath-bound compulsion to attend the meeting wasn't any stronger than his baseline desire to escape his incarceration, so it didn't really do much harm). Dung's absence was explained once Dumbledore finally called the meeting to order. He reported that the wards at Privet Drive were down, that the Dursleys had refused to leave, and that he had assigned Fletcher the task of watching over Harry's relatives. The Headmaster took no issue with the side-bar comments about just how safe that left the Dursleys, since he had secretly reached the same conclusions.

Once that agenda item was covered, each of the hair chasers was asked to give a short accounting of their efforts. Dumbledore congratulated them on their successes, even though it hadn't led to Harry's return. He then directed their attention to his wall-sized world map, and noted that there were now only a handful of locations within Britain (including two that were apparently within Hogwarts). Most were now overseas, with the majority of these locations on the Continent. Most were now stationary, although there were a few that were still tracking along long-distance paths. Dumbledore then declared that the search area needed to be expanded, and stated that the Order would need to travel out of the country, perhaps for an extended period of time.

Questions were raised about the ability of the Order members to leave their families and day jobs to undertake this search. Dumbledore acknowledged the burden, but insisted that Harry's safe return was vital to the Order's mission. He did offer to do what he could to smooth over any employer concerns about sudden unexcused absences from work. Somebody asked whether the wages lost during their travel would be covered. Dumbledore expressed his hope that this would be the case, but made no firm promises. He did say that each person would be given a fair bit of money to cover travel costs, and instructed them to save their receipts if there were any out-of-pocket expenses once those funds were exhausted (his guarantee that all travel expenses would be covered being based on the false assumption that he still had access to the Potter trust account).

Logistical issues were covered next. They couldn't, of course, apparate to far flung places like Cairo or Chicago. Portkeys were Ministry controlled, and Dumbledore wanted to keep the need to do this kind of search and recovery operation quiet. Travel would therefore have to be done quietly, and undercover. He then deputized Mad-Eye to take the lead on making travel assignments, given his previous experiences completing undercover assignments within the Continent.

Dumbledore informed the others that he would be making his own independent efforts to identify Harry's location while remaining at Hogwarts. He cited (quite reasonably, at least in his mind) the need for somebody to remain behind to track their progress on the map, and to reassign locations as necessary.

There was a lot of grumbling about what they were being asked to do. Molly had little sympathy for these complaints and was quick to say so. Of course, she hadn't been asked to travel since she still had two underage children to care for at home. Mad-Eye had a low tolerance for Molly's comments, and that daily threshold had been surpassed during their earlier meeting. He therefore was quick to take the lead and call the meeting to an end, instructing anyone with a travel assignment to meet at the joke shop in one hours' time.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour_

The party had spilled out onto the grounds to watch the sunset. While the Delacour's ancestral home was located on a promontory better situated to watch the sunrise, the sailboats and buildings on the far side of the harbor still offered a pretty sight as they picked up the warm red and orange rays of the setting sun.

As dusk fell, house elves applied insect-repelling charms and fairies gathered to illuminate the veranda. Roger and Emily Granger were delighted by the fairies' appearance; Hermione had described them in her letters home, and used them as an example of how "real" magical beasts and beings differed from their depictions in Muggle folklore and fairytales. Her parents were now being given the opportunity to make that comparison first hand.

Talk about how wonderful it was to witness more of the wizarding world spilled over into Roger and Emily's desire to actually see their daughter use magic. Hermione hadn't found time to do her daily therapeutic spell casting, so this was the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Gabrielle decided it would be even more perfect if her father served as Hermione's practice target, freeing up Harry, Bill and Fleur to play party games. The normally invisible body guards who were on protection detail did not think it perfect to have an English witch hurl jinxes and mild hexes towards the Magical Prime Minister of France, but given the situation their opinions mattered far less to Paul Delacour than his daughter's.

Gabby-cat's opinion on the perfect party game also was a bit unusual. It wasn't a piñata, or "Pin the tail on the Centaur"…it was the French version of a popular Muggle board game called "Pretty Pretty Princess." She asked a house elf set up a card table and chairs while she ran off to retrieve the board game from her room.

It was a ridiculously delightful situation for Harry and his liegeman to be playing a Muggle game that required them to wear brightly colored plastic earrings, plastic rings, and plastic necklaces (Bill's dragon tooth earring looked especially rugged by comparison). The sixteen-year old smiled when Gabrielle insisted on pictures to document the moment. He wasn't at all upset by the situation (or the potential blackmail material). It was actually pretty fun, and innocent, and amazingly age-appropriate for a nine-year-old girl. The easiest way to decide "it could be worse" was for Harry to imagine what kind of party he would be having if they were all still back at the Burrow, worrying over how well his regimen of neutralizing potions was holding up against a love potion-infused layer cake.

They were close to completing their third game when a post owl glided unabated through the chateau's wards and landed on Bill's shoulder. Recognizing the owl, the curse-breaker asked, "I wonder what Fred and George have to report from back home?"

"Are you sure that it's a report, and not a prank?" Harry asked.

"Can't be too nasty, or the Chateau's wards would have caught it," Fleur reasoned.

Gabby grabbed her sister's sleeve and said (in French), "_It's your turn_!"

"_Be patient, my little princess!"_ Fleur chided, as she watched her fiancé untie a large envelope from the owl's leg.

The thin package inside this envelope was tied up with ribbons and covered in magically-animated wrapping paper. When Bill spotted some writing on the package, he handed it to Harry and said, "It's for you."

"_Fleur, it's still your turn!"_

Bill's fiancée ignored her little sister and asked, "A birthday gift? But why not send it directly to Harry?"

"They might have reasoned that it would be easier to deliver something addressed to me, rather than to him," Bill replied. "Probably also correctly figured that I'd be close enough to Harry to hand deliver it."

"That makes sense," Harry said.

Gabrielle pleaded (in French) for her sister to take her turn, then pleaded (in broken English) for Harry to unwrap his present. The little princess got her way.

"What is it?" Bill asked the younger wizard.

Harry looked at the calendar cover, and it's image of Fred and George in front of their shop. He read the cover text, and reported that it was a twelve-month academic year calendar promoting the joke shop. But knowing who had sent and (presumably) created that calendar, Harry set it on the card table next to the game board and asked Bill to confirm that fact with some diagnostic spell work.

Bill did so…right after he acceded to Gabrielle's demand that he take his turn.

A few spells and one moved game marker later, Bill told Harry, "I can't be certain that it's a calendar, but I am pretty certain that you won't get jinxed or hexed if you open it up to see for yourself."

The birthday boy trusted his liegeman's curse-breaking skills, but still thought it prudent to ask Bill to cover him with a shield spell while he opened the calendar.

Gabrielle's squeal of delight when she landed on a board space that allowed her to recover the Princess's crown was more than loud enough to drown out the gasp that escaped from Harry's mouth when he opened the calendar.

"Are you okay?" Bill asked, as Harry quickly closed the cover.

"Yeah, I think…no harm done. Just surprised me," the younger wizard replied.

While Gabrielle triumphantly grabbed the game crown from her sister's head, Harry called for a house elf, and quietly asked him to bring the calendar up to his bedroom.

Once the house elf popped away with the gift, Fleur asked, "What did you see that was so surprising?"

The messy-haired wizard nervously glanced over to where his girlfriend was still showing off lower-year spell work to her parents. He turned back to Bill and Fleur, leaned forward, and quietly replied, "Looks like their version of a naughty pin-up calendar."

Fleur asked, "How naughty?" at the same time that Bill asked, "See anyone you know?"

Harry chuckled, and shook his head. "First page wasn't too naughty…at least not by French beach standards. There was a blue-skinned nude woman, dancing with her back turned, so I couldn't tell if I knew her or not."

"A blue nude?" Fleur asked. "Why didn't you let us see her?"

Harry nodded towards Gabrielle. "Not exactly age-appropriate."

Fleur decided some teasing was in order. "But your eyes…they were drawn towards Hermione rather than my sister…I think that you are more worried about what your girlfriend will think of the gift."

Gabby saved Harry from providing an immediate response when she touched his arm and said, "C'est ton tour, bien-aimé."

The birthday boy turned towards the young witch and asked, "What was that?"

Gabby smiled sweetly and said, "I give a French lesson, Harry. Répétez après moi…. C'est ton tour, bien-aimé."

Harry chuckled. "Okay…say tun tour, bien ah may."

Gabrielle's eyes lit with delight. "Vraiment?" she asked. She leaned over, placed a chaste kiss on Harry's cheek, and added, "Merci, Cherie!"

"What just happened?" Harry asked, as the little princess spun the board game's spinner.

"I think that she just tricked you into giving her your turn," Fleur said with a laugh.

Bill added, "She also tricked you into calling her your beloved."

His liegelord shrugged it off as Gabrielle moved her playing piece the indicated number of spaces.

"She has you wrapped around her little finger, doesn't she?" Bill asked.

Harry chuckled, and quietly replied, "Better than having her wrapped around my hook."

**oo00OO00oo**

_Diagon Alley_

The Calendar Club plus Arthur had gathered on the joke shop's rooftop to receive travel instructions. The gin bottle had been tucked away and replaced by an ever-full, ever-hot kettle to help take the edge off a cool night. Verity and Chastity had taken charge of the tea service, working alongside their boyfriend's father. Their friendly conversations and some of Arthur's off-handed comments about the flat made it clear to the others that he knew about (and at least tacitly accepted) the shared living arrangements.

Mad-Eye hobbled up the stairs and barked out the obligatory complaint about lack of vigilance. He then pulled a small envelope out of his robe pocket and handed it to Arthur.

"I'm giving you a chance to satisfy your dearest wish," Moody told the Ministry official. "And more than enough time to satisfy it!"

"What's that, then?" Fred asked.

"A round-trip Muggle airplane ticket to Australia," Mad-Eye explained. He turned towards Arthur and asked, "You have a valid Muggle passport, right?"

"Valid enough," Arthur replied.

"Right then, I tossed in a fair bit of Muggle money to cover your expenses. Flight leaves Heathrow Airport in the morning…there's a stop in Singapore along the way."

"Sounds like a long trip," said Tonks.

"Twenty-two hours, one-way," Mad-Eye noted.

"Almost an entire day?" Fred asked. "Crikey!"

Fred's father didn't seem to mind. "Like Alastor said, son…that gives me all the more time to figure out how airplanes stay up in the air!"

"Have fun with that," said Hestia.

"Right then, Arthur…off you go!" said Mad-Eye. "Might as well head back home and tell Molly that you'll be gone the better part of a week. And if she starts to whine, remind her that it's all in the name of …"

"THE GREATER GOOD!" everyone shouted in unison.

After assuring Mad-Eye that he was capable of getting to the Muggle airport without assistance, Arthur said his goodbyes and headed back to the Burrow.

"Well that was a very convenient assignment," snickered Tonks.

"Somebody had to make the trip," said Shacklebolt. "Nicely done, Alastor."

"Thank you," Mad-Eye replied. "Now that it's just down to us malcontents…everyone meet back here at seven in the morning. Only Muggle clothing, and make it look like you're going on a beach holiday. Anyone who messes up and arrives in temperature-charmed clothing gets to wear what I pick out for them."

"Now there's some incentive," McGonagall joked.

"No magical jewelry, no wizard money, no emergency portkeys, no magically-expanded billfolds or magically-enhanced female sanitary products…carry nothing magical aside from your wands. We're traveling Muggle, and we're going to damn well look the part!"

"Where will be heading?" asked Hestia.

Mad-Eye glared at the witch.

"Never mind," she sighed.

**oo00OO00oo**

_Chateau Delacour_

Harry was in bed, finding it hard to get past the lovely month of May. That page of Fred and George's calendar featured Jessica "Boom-Boom" Walton, the Seventh-Year Hufflepuff that had made every male ickle firsty strobe his robes (as soon as the onset puberty made such a response possible). The buxom blonde had drawn just as many stares and hallway comments as Harry had that first year of school, and there had been rumors of their being a rather large fanboy club. And that was based almost entirely on how well she filled out her school robes. Harry wondered just what kind of response she would generate from the male population at Hogwarts once this picture was in circulation, and the calendar was posted on dormitory walls. Jessica was stretched out naked on a bed, and in the middle of an erotic dream while a box of Patented Daydream Charms lay open beside her. An arm draped across her chest hid her nipples, but left most of her massive breasts exposed. The duvet was artfully arranged to conceal her crotch, but there was nothing hiding what she was supposedly doing within that daydream, given the way that she was curling her toes and thrusting her hips.

The birthday boy was startled by a scratch against a section of wall next to the far-side nightstand. He quickly slammed the calendar shut, pulled down the covers, slipped out of bed, and tossed the calendar towards the gift pile on his desk. He checked the front of his shorts, and readjusted himself into a not-so-obvious profile. He tried to press his hair down, then wondered why he really needed to press his hair down. He walked over to the concealed doorway and pushed down on the right piece of molding. The door swung open, and his girlfriend entered his room wearing a dressing gown.

"Sorry," she said. "Took longer than I thought to get rid of Mum."

"No worries," Harry replied.

Hermione looked at the pile of gifts stacked up on the desk and asked, "Did you double-check your thank-you list to make sure that I got everybody?"

"Yeah, the list was good," said Harry. "Unless you wanted me to write a thank-you note for your time-turned present?"

His girlfriend shook her head as she pulled Harry into a kiss. "I'm expecting you to show me how much you liked that present by unwrapping it on a regular basis."

"On a regular basis, huh?" Harry asked. "Sounds like something destined for your planner."

"Oh, you!" Hermione chided, pushing against his chest. "So it was a good list…but not good enough to motivate you to start in on actually writing your thank-yous?"

"Well…"

Hermione vocalized a "Hmmph!" and walked over to the desk. She picked up the thrown calendar and asked, "I missed this one, though...didn't I?"

"Yeah, it arrived while you were showing your parents your magic," said Harry. He quickly added, "But I added Fred and George to the thank-you list."

"Yes, Fleur told me about this gift," Hermione said slyly. "Did you flip through the entire year, or are you going to resist temptation and make each new month a surprise?"

"Hermione, I wasn't about to look at it while Gabby was sitting there…"

"How about when you were sitting in bed just now?" Hermione teased. Knowing her boyfriend well enough to correctly interpret the dilation of his pupils, she smiled and tossed the calendar towards him.

"Oh, relax," she said, "and bring that to bed. I want to see for myself how badly I should hex Fred and George for corrupting my boyfriend."

Harry snorted. "Are we talking about the same two lads who corrupted my girlfriend with a vibrating chicken?"

Hermione shook her head as she turned and walked into her boyfriend's closet. She reemerged with one of Harry's t-shirts and headed towards his en suite lavatory.

"Sorry, need to pee," she explained.

"No worries," Harry replied.

He paused to consider the fact that his girlfriend didn't bother to close the door as she disappeared into the lavatory, then shrugged and slipped into bed, sitting up against the headboard and pulling up the covers in case he needed to conceal any embarrassing reactions.

Harry thought it best to quickly flip through the calendar pages and double-check if there were any hidden land mines to worry about. He paused for only a moment to admire "Boom-Boom's" baps, before checking out Miss June (a former Slytherin, if his memory was correct!) and Miss July (a very pretty witch who seemed a bit too old to have overlapped at Hogwarts). Harry then turned to the back cover, which featured a rather innocent storefront picture. He wondered how Fred and George had managed to convince their models to pose, and what their plans were for the calendar's distribution.

Some fine print in the lower corner of the back cover caught Harry's eye. The phrase _"Special Unrated Marauder's Edition" _was just barely visible, which seemed counterproductive. Usually, that kind of enticing specification was plastered for marketing purposes on the top front of a video box cover, and in big bold letters…it was almost the same as boldly proclaiming _"Now with 300% More Naughty Bits!" _

Not that there were more than a handful of people alive other than him who could make sense of that cryptic message. Lupin, Fred and George knew the map's password, as did Ron, and Hermione…

"_Could that be the reason?"_ Harry thought to himself. _"The Twins wanted me to know that there was hidden content within the calendar, but didn't necessarily want Hermione to easily determine that fact?"_

Curiosity killed the cat, and caused Harry to place his wand tip against the calendar with scant regard for any form of vigilance.

"I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good," he whispered.

The calendar was enveloped in momentary bluish glow, suggesting that the magic words had activated some kind of magic. But there weren't any immediate changes to the back cover photo…no naked witches cavorting in the storefront window, or secret maps revealed.

"Huh," Harry said, as he turned the calendar over.

The full-frontal nudity generated a full-throated "Oh, shite!"

"What's wrong?" Hermione called out from the lav.

"Nothing," her boyfriend reassured her. "Just got pranked by Fred and George."

"By that naughty calendar?"

"Yeah."

"What happened…did it punch you in the face?"

Harry risked another look at the cover and laughed.

"Not yet," he replied.

Naked!Fred and Naked!George were now waving (and swaying) at him, and Harry was imagining their todgers leaping off the page and poking him in both eyes. It was a funny idea that was just plausible enough to warrant holding the calendar at arm's length.

Hermione emerged from the en suite wearing a loosely-tied dressing gown over Harry's t-shirt.

"Let me see," she asked.

Harry turned the calendar around so that it faced Hermione.

"Ackkkkk!"

"See what I mean?" Harry asked.

His girlfriend drew her wand out from her sleeve and cautiously approached the calendar cover.

"Expecting it to bite?" Harry asked.

"Expecting it to blow up in my face," she replied.

Hermione stopped a foot short of the calendar. She waited a few seconds before breaking out into giggles.

Harry shook his head. "I'm not sure that's a reaction that either of them would have hoped for."

"No, it's not that," Hermione insisted. "It's just…I never realized until now that they weren't identical twins."

"What?" Harry asked. He flipped the calendar back around and reexamined the photograph. "They look the same to me…same, erm…"

"Same length?" Hermione teased, as she untied her gown and let it slip to the floor. She smiled when her boyfriend's eyes were immediately drawn towards her skimpy knickers, which were barely covered by her t-shirt.

"Nice to know you're more interested in my bits than theirs," she said, as she pulled down the duvet and slipped into bed alongside Harry.

"Course I am!" Harry protested. "Still curious though…why don't you think they're twins?"

"Oh, they're twins, alright," Hermione replied. "They just aren't identical…more like mirror images." She risked bringing her finger close to (but not touching) the cover and added, "Their penises are hanging in opposite directions. Fred dresses left, George dresses right."

Harry squinted even harder at the image…enough to realize that his girlfriend was right (as usual).

"You were awful quick to spot those differences," he teased. "It's almost as if your gaze went immediately to their bits."

"Oh, honestly, Harry…are you saying that your eyes weren't immediately drawn to the pin-up girls' bits when you flipped though this calendar?"

Harry shrugged. "Not at all."

"Is that so?" Hermione asked. A smile formed on her lips as she took the calendar out of Harry's hands and asked, "So what color eyes did Miss March have?"

"What?"

"I'm sure that you carefully reviewed each month of the year," Hermione replied. "What was Miss March's eye color?"

"March?" Harry asked. "Let's see…if it starts in August, then March was the…five months to end the year, so eighth month overall…geez, I don't even remember who she was."

"Sure you don't," Hermione teased. "Well then, how about Miss August…the first one? Surely you can remember what color eyes she had?"

Harry snorted. "Yeah, I remember Miss August…but it's a trick question. She had her back to the camera…couldn't tell if her eyes were blue, brown or green. Although I can say that her elbows were blue."

"Elbows, huh?" Hermione asked. She scooted her bum around so that she was facing Harry, then opened the calendar cover….and quickly closed it shut.

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"What do you remember seeing in that first month?"

"A blue-skinned naked woman with her back turned, dancing and shaking her bum," Harry replied. "Did you see something different?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"What did you see, then?"

"It was more like a group of pale-skinned naked men and women, wishing you a happy birthday."

"What?" Harry asked, as he grabbed the calendar back.

The new image above the month of August was a group photograph of most of the Order, standing naked shoulder to naked shoulder, behind a waist-high banner that read "**Happy Birthday Harry**!"

The banner wasn't wide enough to cover their naked chests.

Or naked breasts.

Or a specific pair of breasts that belonged to one of his Hogwarts professors.

"HOLY SHITE!"

"Ssshush!" Hermione hissed. "You're testing the strength of our silencing charms!"

"But…but that's…naked...McGonagall!"

"They're just breasts," Hermione decided. "Probably not even hers, what with the availability of polyjuice potion…"

"Doesn't matter if it's somebody else dressed up in her polyjuiced breasts," Harry countered. "They're still McGonagall's breasts!"

"Honestly, Harry," Hermione said with a smile. "What if the Professor decided to vacation at a nearby resort, and decided to go topless. Would you have the same reaction if you saw her on the beach?"

"YES!" Harry declared.

Hermione shook her head dismissively. "Actually, she'd have no reason not to show those off…not a bit of sag…I could only hope to be that fit at her age. Really, Harry, I don't know what your problem is."

"My problem is…do you think you'd be reacting the same way if it was a male professor?"

His girlfriend shrugged and pointed towards the photo. "Actually, there's Professor Lupin, and Professor Moody…"

"With their danglies hiding behind the banner," Harry noted.

Hermione smiled. She took the calendar back from Harry and said, "Well maybe…there are eleven more months to the year, right?"

Her eyes widened when she turned to the next month.

"Who?" Harry asked.

"Tonks."

"Tonks looking like Tonks?"

"Yeah."

"Well that's a different picture, then. What's she wearing?"

"Aside from a pig nose?" Hermione asked. She flipped the calendar around and said, "Look for yourself."

Harry took this as permission to look and took a good look at the image. In addition to her pig's nose, "Miss September" was wearing a pair of white thigh-high silk stockings. And a smile. And nothing else.

"I guess it's easy enough for her to make sure that her carpet matches her drapes," Hermione quipped.

Harry nodded as he compared Tonks's neon-pink head hair to her neon-pink pubic hairs, which just happened to be trimmed in the shape of a lightning bolt.

"Like that month better than the first?" Hermione asked.

Her boyfriend tried to pull off a nonchalant shrug.

"Yeah, I guess. Not like it's my professor flashing me."

Hermione smirked. "And no pesky banner to get in the way of a good view, huh?"

Harry smiled as he reached out and flipped the calendar around to face Hermione.

"Like you said, Sweetheart…it's nothing more than I might see if Tonksie decided to take a beach holiday down here, right? 'Cept maybe for the nose, of course."

"Oh, of course," Hermione said snidely. The smile on her face let Harry know that she was teasing him more than teeing-off on him.

"Shall I?" she asked.

Mr. October was revealed when Harry gave her the go-ahead.

Hermione's eyes widened and she chewed on her lower lip in a futile effort the keep from giggling. She flipped the calendar around to show Harry what she thought was so funny.

Mad-Eye Moody was standing center-stage, dressed only in his bowler hat and dark-brown duster. The full-length jacket hung open from his shoulders, revealing the full length of his wooden leg. A thick mat of white chest hairs did a fair job of concealing a dozen different scars, the same way that a thick mat of white pubic hairs did a fair job of concealing his junk.

The retired Auror was reading the latest issue of _The Daily Prophet, _and as the animation played out he showed just how much he thought of the paper's editorial policies by throwing it to the ground and taking a piss on it. And that was something that Harry definitely thought was worth a few giggles.

"I can't believe that he'd be willing do something like that in front of a camera," said Hermione. "Much less send you the picture."

"It certainly is a unique and memorable birthday present," Harry agreed. He flipped the calendar and said, "Go on, then…unless you want to take turns."

"Taking turns would lessen the chance of both of us suffering mental scarring," Hermione noted. "That would make it your turn."

Harry agreed, and got the first look at a full-frontal Kingsley Shacklebolt as Mr. November. Hermione saw no real need to take a look for hemself, so Harry stuck a finger under the next page and closed the cover. Hermione took the calendar, replaced Harry's finger mark with her own, and opened it up to the month of December.

Harry asked, "So?"

"Hestia Jones," she said.

"Huh," said Harry. "Don't hardly know her, aside from the fact that she's in the Order."

"I talked with her a few times at Headquarters, but other than that..."

"Anything that I really need to see?" Harry asked.

"Need to, or want to?"

Harry whined, "Hermione…"

"Right," she replied. "I guess there's no compelling need for you to look, unless you're interested in seeing a natural blonde who's only a few years older than your mum."

"No thanks," said Harry.

Harry's eyes widened when he took the first look at January. The image featured the werewolf-sized willie that had gotten the Twins' girlfriends so hot and bothered.

"What?" Hermione asked.

"So here's your chance," said Harry. "Tell me again how nonchalant you'd be if it was Professor Lupin who decided to take a beach holiday?"

Hermione pursed her lips. "I'd like to think that I'd be mature enough to handle running into him on a clothing optional beach."

Harry chuckled as flipped the calendar around.

"Sure about that?" he asked.

Hermione very quietly blushed very deeply.

"Wow," she whispered.

"I suppose that's a 'can't be helped' kind of response," Harry teased. "Your turn."

Hermione stared at the image of the well-hung lycanthrope for a few more seconds, before pulling herself together and turning the page.

Harry didn't wait for permission to look when his girlfriend doubled over it laughter…it was Fred and George, celebrating Valentine's Day. They once again had their Weasley red pubes on display as they stood back-to-back holding red- and pink-colored "Cock-a-diddle-do" vibrating chickens out from their crotches, as if they were choking them.

The next image was a testimonial to Tonks's skills as a metamorph. Or so they hoped…Mr. March was a naked headmaster, with just enough beard to cover his bits as he did a little jig. It was equal parts revolting and mesmerizing, and a good reason to move quickly on to the month of April, where Mundungus Fletcher graced the page with only his tobacco pouch to cover his bits. There was nothing mesmerizing about the image…it was full-on revolting, and Hermione quickly slammed the calendar shut. She then took a moment to swallow the throw-up in her mouth.

Hermione and Harry discussed whether they should continue on. It was clear that the calendar featured members of the Order of the Phoenix, and by process of elimination they had a reasonable guess about the remaining models. It wasn't a pretty thought, regardless of whether it was a "real" model or a Tonks impersonation. But it was also too much of an irresistible temptation (in a "Two Girls, One Cup," kind of way), so they bravely soldiered on.

Hermione held serve and took a sneak peek at Mrs. May. She quickly shut the page and passed the calendar to Harry.

"You don't want to know, or to even imagine," she whispered.

"Good enough for me," Harry replied. Then he took a quick look at the next month…and broke out into laughter.

"Oh, that's….that's…seriously disturbing," he declared.

"What?" Hermione asked. "Who?"

Harry smiled, and shook his head. "You know how I've always wondered how Snape makes his black robes billow out when he makes a dramatic exit?"

"Yes?"

"Well…imagine black pubic hairs billowing out the same way."

Hermione couldn't imagine it, so she had to see it. She laughed just as much as Harry did at Tonks's cleverness.

Noting that Psuedo-Snape was Mr. June, Hermione slipped her finger underneath the current page, then closed the calendar cover.

"Ok, Harry…just one more month to go."

"Right, so…Mr. Weasley?" Harry asked.

"Don't think so," Hermione replied.

"Mrs. Weasley?"

Hermione shook her head. "Remember that month where I told you it was better for you not to know or even imagine who the pin-up girl was?"

"Oh, thanks," Harry whined. "Now you _do _have me imagining."

Hermione chuckled. "There still somebody who was flashing her baps in that group shot who hasn't gone solo yet."

"McGonagall?"

"Yeah," said Hermione. "Don't know if I want to look…and I'm guessing that you're not all that anxious…"

"Well…actually," Harry admitted.

"Harry!"

"What?" he asked. "Almost feel like…if she's been enough of a Gryffindor to do something like this, then the least we can do is be brave enough to see what she wants to show."

"I don't know…"

"No, really," Harry decided. "We both know that we need to do this, so…"

He flipped open to the last month and held it out for joint viewing.

Their Transfiguration professor was buck naked, lying on a bed lengthwise. She was on her stomach, with her arms tucked to her sides and her face turned towards the camera. She was staring directly into the lens, defiantly daring the viewer to watch as a much younger witch crawled into bed behind her. That witch, who was dressed in a thin green camisole and a navy blue thong, grabbed Minerva's hip and pulled her tight against her own waist. Minerva lifted her leg, spreading herself wide for the camera as she arched her back in pleasure. The younger witch reached up and tickled under McGonagall's chin, then slowly dragged her fingers down the professor's chest. Those fingers scratched, and flexed, and rubbed their way down to Minerva's belly. McGonagall purred, and pressed back against the younger witch's thighs, urging her bed partner to rub lower and lower, down towards her most sensitive pleasure point.

The animated image froze just before Chastity's fingers reached the fur in between the animagus's rear legs.

Harry and Hermione stared without blinking. Then they laughed without stopping. They had never been so delighted about being pranked so completely.

Mischief Managed.

**oo00OO00oo**

**A/N:** I'm certain that most all of you guessed this ending earlier in the chapter, but if I even caught a few hundred of you by surprise, then I'll be happy.

This, by the way, is probably the last bit of extended naughtiness. The last two mapped out chapters are far more plot-driven and filled with mostly action/adventure scenes.


End file.
